


The Fresh Prince of Pulau Rintis

by snekwami



Category: BoBoiBoy (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, But with spaceships and robots, Deadly cookies, Fang will be The Love Interest but like later on, Friendship, Lots of them and it's not taken seriously at all whatsoever, M/M, Near Death Experiences, because of all the assassination attempts, idiots to lovers, maybe occasionally this treads the fine line of a T-rating but overall it's a G
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 41,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21699760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snekwami/pseuds/snekwami
Summary: Boboiboy, heir to the throne of his planet, goes to boarding school. Adu Du tries to murder him a lot.
Relationships: BoBoiBoy/Fang
Comments: 15
Kudos: 51





	1. Boboiboy is almost killed several times

**Author's Note:**

> Well I am a sucker for royalty AUs and I got really, really into this show. I'm lowkey not even taking this fic seriously, it's just really pretty silly and definitely will get gayer at some point, and there is going to be so much casual nearly-getting-killed because I can't remember how to write things that aren't crack when it's this late at night. Did I mention it's past 1am? It is. I have not had nearly enough sleep and it shows.
> 
> The kids in this are probably Galaxy-age (so like 14-15 I guess?) but I based a huge amount of it on the original show, since Adu Du is the villain and everything. I'll try to not Angst it up, I promise. There won't be much in the way of spoilers.

Academy Planet was a planet like no other. Its entire existence was to be a place of education for the upper echelons of galactic society, where every inhabitant’s purpose was to serve the great Sector 13 Academy for Royalty, Nobility, and Honourable Combat. The architects, the vendors, every employee of every trade worked in some way, directly or indirectly, for the Academy. No other sector of the galaxy had anything like it. It was unique – a jewel amongst the stars.

Unfortunately, there were rather a _lot_ of stars, and a ridiculous amount of empty space between them. It was 17 lightyears away from Boboiboy’s home planet, and on the very last stretch of his journey, the warp drive on his spaceship had mysteriously vanished, leaving him and his grandfather crawling along for three weeks before reaching the Academy at last.

At least all his paperwork had been sent in advance, so hopefully there wouldn’t be any issues with him starting a few weeks late. His parents, having had a longstanding lineage of ruling kindly, had applied for their son and heir to be part of the esteemed House of Benevolence. There was no doubt that he would be accepted. At the very least, if there wasn’t enough space, he would possibly be put into the House of Neutrality for a while. Well, as long as he wasn’t forcefully put into Malevolence against his will, it would be fine.

The House of Benevolence would teach him how to be a successful leader through peace and diplomacy, with war only being used as a defence. If he did well in his studies, he could take on extra years at the Academy’s coveted University of Further Studies.

As Boboiboy watched the stars lazily drift past the spaceship window, he certainly hoped he wouldn’t have to stay on for university. More studies? No way.

-

Arriving three weeks late had far more perks than he’d realized. Tok Aba had sent ahead a message to inform the Academy that they weren’t dead, just delayed, and as such the staff were already prepared for his arrival. Not to mention, all the students were waiting with their faces pressed against the window, eager to see him as his spaceship landed in the designated parking space in the grounds.

A red carpet was being rolled out from the ramp to the huge front doors of the Academy within a matter of seconds. A member of staff from the school – a man decked out in dazzling clothing, along with a long cape fluttering in the breeze – was standing there ready to welcome him.

“Hello, Your Royal Highness!” the man said, giving him an unnecessarily dramatic bow, followed by equally dramatic gestures as he continued to speak. “Welcome to the Academy for Royalty, Nobility, and Honourable Combat! We have been awaiting your arrival with open hearts, Prince Boboiboy!”

“Uh, thank you sir,” Boboiboy replied.

“It is my pleasure! I am the great and noble ex-King Zola, now known as Papa Zola, since my own planet was sadly destroyed in an asteroid impact, and I have no place to rule over… But now I am the head teacher of the House of Benevolence here at the Academy, where students will learn how to rule with honour and justice! I am proud to take you in as my student, Boboiboy!”

Oh, so he was in Benevolence after all? Good! That was exactly where he wanted to be.

Tok Aba stumbled out behind him, yawning. “Here at last? Is there anywhere we can get a new warp drive for our spaceship?”

Papa Zola shook his head sadly. “Alas, there is not! But do not fear – I, the great Papa Zola, will build one for you! It will take me some time, but in the meantime you may stay here as long as you like! We will happily provide you with comfortable lodgings!”

“Sounds good to me,” Tok Aba said, shrugging.

“Excellent! Now follow me, and I will show you into the Academy! Leave your luggage here, the porters will bring it for you!”

A few little robots – the porters, evidently – flew into the spaceship to begin retrieving the luggage. Papa Zola spun around with a swish of his cape and began walking up the red carpet towards the building, and Boboiboy and Tok Aba quickly followed.

Plenty of faces were peeking out of the windows at the front of the building, watching them. The building itself was huge – more like a castle or fortress than a school. The parapets up on the roof had stone gargoyles every few metres, sitting there, glaring down with their eerie blank eyes.

Just as they reached the front doors there was an almighty crash behind them. Boboiboy jumped and turned around to see what the noise was.

One of the stone gargoyles lay there, cracked into several pieces, having only just barely missed landing on him.

“What is the meaning of this?” Papa Zola cried, clenching a fist and turning towards the roof.

Boboiboy looked up too, shaken. How close had he been to being hit by that thing?!

The distant sound of a shrill, angry voice was audible from seemingly up on the roof.

“What is wrong with you, Probe?! You missed!”

“I’m sorry Mister Boss, I tried my best…”

The second voice was quieter and more high-pitched. There was the sound of metal hitting metal.

“Ouch!”

“Serves you right, stupid robot! You’re always doing things too late! First you stole the warp drive too late, now you dropped the gargoyle too late, how are we ever supposed to kill him like this?”

“Mister Boss, they can hear us…”

“Shut up! We’re going inside!”

Their voices faded away.

What had that been all about? Whoever it was up there had been talking about trying to kill someone… _by stealing a warp drive on their spaceship… hmm…_

“Those must be students from the House of Malevolence!” Papa Zola said, shaking his fist in the general direction of the roof. “Well have no worries, Boboiboy! Benevolence is the superior house, and we will show those Malevolent students the true meaning of justice!”

Boboiboy just gave him a somewhat nervous thumbs up. “Cool…”

“Anyway, moving on! Welcome to the Academy!” He gestured at the doors, which were slowly opening as he spoke. “The student representative of the House of Benevolence, the most esteemed and noble Yaya, will show you around and introduce you to your fellow students! Meanwhile I will arrange a place for your grandfather to stay, and make sure everything is in order for both of you. Continue along your way! And follow me, Tok Aba!”

Papa Zola turned with another swish of his cape, walking off in the direction of a stone archway to the left. Tok Aba gave Boboiboy’s head a pat, then went to follow.

The doors were now fully open, and a very neat and tidy-looking student – Yaya, evidently – was walking out with a clipboard and pen in hand. To Boboiboy’s surprise, she walked straight past him and over to the remains of the fallen gargoyle.

“Tut tut, whoever dropped this off the roof is getting a detention…” She shook her head and noted something down on her clipboard. Then she turned to face him at last. “Welcome to Academy Planet, Boboiboy! My name is Yaya and I’m the student representative of the House of Benevolence. I oversee all the extra-curricular activities and make sure that all Benevolent students are following the rules. Nice to finally meet you!”

Boboiboy nodded. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Everyone’s been waiting for you. You’ve missed three weeks of studies so far, so I’ve already arranged for you to be tutored in the library after school hours. Your first tutoring session is today, actually, in half an hour, so don’t be late.”

His heart sank – he’d barely just landed, and already had to study?

Yaya was tapping her clipboard with her pen, evidently working her way through a list. “What else, hm… oh yes, since you didn’t turn up to classes on time, you’ve broken the rules and will have to have a detention.”

“What? But it’s not my fault! The warp drive on my ship went missing and I was stuck in space–”

“No excuse to be late to school! Don’t worry though, I’ll help you in your detention. You’ll be in the kitchens, so we can make cookies together! Won’t that be fun?”

She gave him a sunny smile, in such contrast with how casually she was talking about unfair detentions and rule-breaking. Boboiboy was not sure whether to trust her or not. Deciding not to risk getting into even more trouble on his first day here, he just nodded at her and tried to look enthusiastic.

“Great! Now I’ll show you to your chamber. Your roommate has been waiting for you.”

“Uh… roommate?”

“Yes, of course. All students here have roommates. It’s so that if one of you breaks the rules, the other will make sure to tell me about it and I can take the appropriate action. Make sure to keep an eye on your roommate, alright? He seems to be a bit of a troublemaker…”

Boboiboy, being an only child and having parents who left him to his own devices most of the time, was not very used to the presence of other people, especially not in his room. Hopefully this roommate of his wouldn’t get in the way too much – though he certainly wasn’t planning to snitch to Yaya about any troublemaking, even if that was the case.

He followed Yaya into the building itself. Just like the outside, the interior seemed to have been inspired by medieval earth culture, with stone walls and floors and electric candles lighting up the corridor. As he went, he noticed plenty of students staring at him through the windows.

“You’ll be very popular here,” Yaya explained. “You almost died out in space when your warp drive went missing and left you stranded, right? That’s so exciting. Everyone’s been looking forward to your arrival; they all think you’re really cool!”

Really? That was great! It was nice to know that everyone here already thought well of him, even if it was because he nearly died.

“I nearly died just now too,” he said. “Some students from Malevolence pushed a gargoyle off the roof and it nearly hit me, and I heard them saying they were the ones who stole the warp drive too…”

“Really?” Yaya tapped her pen on her chin in thought. “That’s very rude of them.”

“I know! I could have died!”

“Well that’s a shame. Do you know who did it?”

“No, I didn’t see them.”

“I’ll try and investigate.”

“Will you give them a detention?”

She shook her head. “I can’t give detentions to students in other houses. And anyway, Malevolent students follow a different set of rules. It’s not against the rules for them to attempt to kill anyone. If they really did manage to kill you then they would be expelled, of course, but since they failed they _technically_ didn’t break any rules and there’s nothing that can be done.”

Boboiboy just sighed. Hopefully those students would give up and wouldn’t try to kill him again. Why were they doing that anyway? Maybe it was just some kind of misunderstanding.

“Ta-da! Here’s your chamber!” Yaya opened one of the doors. “And here is your roommate, Gopal!”

The roommate in question, Gopal, leapt off the bed he had been sitting on and rushed over. “Boboiboy! It’s so good to finally meet you! Tell me – did you bring any hot chocolate? I heard that the hot chocolate on your planet is amazing.”

“Gopal, don’t be rude! He almost died! And he’s a prince, you should be more polite!”

“Are you guys nobility?” Boboiboy asked.

“Yes, most of us here are nobles. Especially the students in the House of Neutrality.”

“You didn’t answer my question about the hot chocolate,” Gopal said, grabbing him by the shoulders. “The hot chocolate, where is it? There was this weird little green Malevolent alien saying that your planet’s chocolate is to die for, and that he was trying to kill you for it or something – so can I have some? Please?”

“My granddad has some,” Boboiboy said.

“Well where is he?”

“I don’t know, Papa Zola is showing him somewhere to stay…”

“What’s this about a green Malevolent alien?” Yaya asked, noting something down on her clipboard.

“Some weirdo who said he was willing to kill for hot chocolate,” Gopal said, shrugging. “I have no idea who he was. But with a voice like that, he must be Malevolent.”

“Gopal! You can’t just judge people on what their voice sounds like!”

“Oh come on, trust me! This guy was pure evil!”

“I’ll find that out for myself. In the meantime, get Boboiboy settled in and show him to the library for his tutor session. I’ll see you later!”

She walked off, still scribbling something on the clipboard as she went. Gopal pulled Boboiboy into the room.

“Here’s the room. You’re now settled in. Okay, so about the hot chocolate–”

“You can have some whenever I find my granddad,” Boboiboy said.

“Oh thank you Boboiboy! You’re the best!”

Boboiboy looked around at the room. It was huge, so big there was a balcony in the corner too. The porters seemed to have already dropped his luggage off – though he was not sure how they’d managed to get here before him.

Right. Time to get settled in for real.

“I wonder what that mysterious ticking noise is,” Gopal said. “I already got rid of all the clocks in this room so that I don’t have to look at the time.”

Boboiboy listened carefully – sure enough, there was a ticking sound. “I think it’s coming from the balcony.”

“Do you think it’s a bomb?”

“Sheesh, of course it’s not a bomb! Don’t be ridiculous.”

He headed out to the balcony, taking a second to admire the pretty view, only to look down and see–

“IT’S A BOMB! GOPAL YOU WERE RIGHT, IT’S A BOMB – GET IT OUT OF HERE–”

An almost cartoonish-looking bomb was smoking away on the floor beside the railings. Who knew what it was doing here?!

Gopal seemed to be too busy running around screaming, so Boboiboy braced himself and carefully picked up the bomb, then flung it off the balcony and into the bushes below. Barely a second later, the bomb exploded.

It… was not a particularly big explosion.

The bushes were slightly singed, and out of the foliage crawled a little green box-headed alien and a strange purple robot.

“What – what just happened?” the alien gasped out between coughs.

“The bomb seems to have exploded on _us_ , Mister Boss–”

“I can see that, Probe!”

Boboiboy was immediately on guard – he recognized those voices. These were the students from the roof earlier!

The alien stood up. “Oh great! He’s still alive! This is all your fault, Probe!” He hit the purple robot over the head.

“Ouch! What did I do?”

“Be quiet!”

Boboiboy leaned over the railing. “What’s going on? Did you just put a bomb in my room?”

The alien glared up at him. “So, Boboiboy, we meet at last!”

“Um… who are you?”

Gopal came running over. “Hey that’s the alien who said he’d kill for some of your hot chocolate!”

“That’s right!” The alien stood up at full height, which was not very tall. “I am Adu Du! I was the one who stole your warp drive, dropped the gargoyle off the roof, and planted a bomb in your room!”

This was absurd. Some tiny alien was trying to assassinate him?

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “If you want some hot chocolate you can just ask, you know…”

“I don’t just want to drink your hot chocolate, I want to _own_ your hot chocolate!” Adu Du let out a ridiculous-sounding evil laugh. “You’re heir to the throne of your planet, a planet renowned galaxy-wide for having the best cocoa. I want to own that cocoa. And intergalactic laws state that anyone who kills an heir becomes the new heir. So I will kill you, and then someday all that cocoa will be mine!”

Gopal scoffed. “Yo. That is the stupidest plan I ever heard. And your bomb wasn’t even powerful enough to kill anyone.”

“Well that’s not my fault, that’s Probe’s fault!”

“I’m sorry Mister Boss!” Probe said, hiding his face behind his little robot hands. “I tried my best but making bombs with only the equipment in the chemistry labs is so hard!”

“Do better next time!” Adu Du turned back to the balcony. “And as for you, Boboiboy… You’d better watch out! Next time you won’t get so lucky!”

Gopal yawned. “Are you done yet, incompetent alien? Go back to your Tower of Malevolence or wherever you evil kids hang out.”

“Hmph!” Adu Du marched off, with Probe following quickly behind.

“That was so weird,” Boboiboy said. “Thank you for sticking up for me Gopal.”

“Hey, no problem. In return you’ll let me have some free hot chocolate, right?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks! You’re the best friend ever!”

While Boboiboy did suspect that for now at least, this “friendship” was rather superficial and based on the exchange of cocoa, he was glad to have someone around who thought so highly of him. It was definitely less lonely than the over-independence he had back on his home planet.

“Can you show me where the library is?” he asked, deciding to change the subject.

“Oh yes, of course! You’ve got your tutor session with Ying there now, right?”

“Ying?”

“Yeah, she’s tutoring you. And me as well. I also need tutoring.”

“Have you missed school too?”

Gopal shrugged. “No, I’m just really bad at studying. But anyway, we should probably go there now, and maybe afterwards we can find your granddad and get some of that hot chocolate.” He grabbed Boboiboy by the arm and started heading off.

“I can’t, I have a detention in the kitchens…”

Gopal stopped in his tracks. He slowly turned to look at Boboiboy, true fear in his eyes. “Detention with Yaya?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever you do, _do not eat her cookies_.”

“Why not?”

“Just trust me on this. Now come on.”

They carried on going. Boboiboy frowned – this school was so much weirder than he had expected from what his parents had told him. Well… his parents had barely told him anything, really, as usual. But still… evil aliens out to kill him? Detention with the threat of cookies? A roommate who seemed to care more about chocolate than people?

What a year this was going to be…


	2. Then perish

The library had guards outside – real medieval guards, in actual steel armour. They stepped aside to allow Boboiboy and Gopal to pass through into the room. As soon as they had done so, every head in the library turned to look.

“Is that Boboiboy?”

“That is! That’s him!”

“He’s finally arrived!”

“Look at his hat, he’s so cool!”

“I wonder what it must have felt like being stuck in space…”

Boboiboy continued following Gopal, both amused and slightly nervous about his odd popularity from almost having died. All the students sitting at the desks had stopped their homework to watch him as he went.

They made their way to a shelf near the back and sat down.

“Good, we’re just in time,” Gopal said, checking his watch. “Ying should be here in a minute.”

“TOO LATE! I’M ALREADY HERE!”

“WHA–”

Gopal practically fell out of his seat in shock. A bespectacled kid with pigtails had popped up next to him with zero warning and was standing there grinning, a pile of books in her arms.

“How do you just sneak up on people like that, Ying?!” Gopal said, getting back up. “Don’t do it, you’ll give me a heart attack!”

“Maybe you should take a lesson from the Combat students and learn to be more vigilant!” Ying put her books down on the table and pulled up a nearby chair. “Anyway, hi Boboiboy! I’m so glad you’re here, I’ve been waiting to be able to tutor someone who isn’t Gopal!”

“Hey, what’s wrong with tutoring me?”

“I’m just hoping Boboiboy is less lazy with his homework…”

Ying’s voice was so shrill and fast that Boboiboy had to resist sticking his fingers in his ears just to give his brain a bit of space. He tried to smile at her. “No, no, I’ll do my homework.”

“Good!”

“But um… if this is a library, aren’t you supposed to be quiet?”

“Hah, no one would dare tell me to be quiet,” Ying said with a smirk. “I’m a _princess_. And I have the best results in the House of Benevolence.”

“I thought that was Yaya?” Gopal said.

“Hey! How dare you say such a thing?! It’s me, of course! Be nice to me, peasant!”

“Sorry Ying!”

“Well he’s not really a peasant,” Ying said, turning to Boboiboy. “But the exact variations of titles and ranks across the galaxy won’t be covered until our third tutor session, so I won’t deal with that for now. No – today your lesson is an introduction into how the school works!”

“You mean like the houses and stuff?” Boboiboy asked.

“Exactly!” She opened up one of the books in front of her. “Look around this room, Boboiboy. There is one Honourable Combat student in here – are you able to visually identify which one it is?”

Boboiboy looked around. Most of the students were still watching him in complete awe. In fact, the only one who wasn’t was some rather goth-looking kid who seemed to be miserably staring out of the window and pointedly avoiding looking at him.

“I don’t know, sorry,” he said. He had no clue how to tell who was a Combat student and who wasn’t – none of them had swords with them, after all!

“That’s what I thought. Well don’t worry – by the end of today’s lesson, you will be able to recognize any Combat student, and will have a good idea of how the house system works.”

“Don’t make it too long, yeah?” Gopal said. “He’s got a detention in the kitchens later.”

All the blood drained from Ying’s face. “Oh no… you did warn him about the cookies, right?”

“Yep.”

“What’s wrong with the cookies?” Boboiboy asked.

Ying looked uncharacteristically terrified. “If you eat one of Yaya’s cookies, you’ll die!”

“Uh, what?”

“They’re toxic! They’ll give you brain haemorrhages and internal organ failure.”

“You might explode!” Gopal added.

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course you wouldn’t explode! They’re toxic, not explosive!”

“Well what’s the difference?”

Ying just shook her head and sighed. “We’re getting off-track. Point is, do not eat the cookies or you’ll die horribly. Anyway, moving on! Let’s begin.”

She laid out the book on the table and pointed at the diagram on it.

“You see these three crests? These are the crests of the three Houses of the Academy: Benevolence, Malevolence, and Neutrality. We’re in the best one, Benevolence, where all the kind and good leaders go. Malevolence, on the other hand, is where trickery, deceit, and dishonourable violence are all not only tolerated, but encouraged. They are our enemies! They also suck.”

“The alien who’s trying to kill me is from Malevolence,” Boboiboy said.

“There’s an alien trying to kill you?”

“Yeah, his name is Adu Du! He stole the warp drive on my spaceship, and then he tried to drop a gargoyle on me, then he tried to blow me up with a bomb…”

“Oh, I know him,” Ying said, narrowing her eyes. “He has no royal or noble ancestry, he got in by forging paperwork. I know because I was the one who discovered the forgery when I was double-checking some things for Papa Zola.”

“Are commoners allowed at this school then?”

“Well not technically, but the House of Malevolence rewards things like forgery and deceit so they’re happy to allow him to stay if that’s how he got in. And personally, I have nothing against commoners joining the school if they wish, I’m sure there are some in the other houses too…”

As independent as Boboiboy had been allowed to be over his life, his palace had been pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and as such, he hadn’t had much interaction with commoners. Or with other nobility and royalty. Or with anyone, really. It was all pretty much the same to him whether someone had a high rank or not.

“And as for the third house, Neutrality,” Ying continued, “it’s actually a special house. Students there may choose to take up the title of knight, in which case they learn Honourable Combat skills alongside their other studies. You can recognize these knights by the fact that they are required to wear the crest of Neutrality on their clothing somewhere at all times.”

Boboiboy looked at the crest carefully. It seemed to be a little dragon on a shield, or something like that. He looked up around the room again – so which student in here was wearing the crest?

Oh… it was the weird goth kid, who was still moodily glaring away from him, in complete contrast to everyone else in the room.

“Is that one over there an Honourable Combat student?” he asked Ying, tilting his head towards the corner where the kid was sitting.

“Yep! That’s the knight-in-training. And I don’t know if you noticed but the guards outside the library are full knights. They’ve finished their training and are staying on the planet to attend the University of Further Studies.”

That was so cool. Real knights! Right here at school! And the fact that Neutrality students got to learn how to fight with swords and bows and arrows and all sorts of fun weapons – that was so interesting.

“Is there a way to change houses?” Boboiboy asked.

“Only if you’re a Neutrality student. You would have to prove yourself as either Benevolent or Malevolent by consistent behaviour matching your desired house over a long period of time, and then _maybe_ you’d be allowed. But it doesn’t happen often.”

So there was no chance of him ever learning Combat. Never mind then. It was probably a lot of effort to keep up with on top of schoolwork anyway, and he really couldn’t be bothered to do that.

“Now, the most important thing is that we beat Malevolence at the interhouse tournaments that happen every now and then,” Ying said, flipping the page over. “There’s no point trying to beat Neutrality at things like jousting and archery, they always win because of their knights. But football? We have a chance there. And no matter what, we must always beat Malevolence. That’s important.”

“There’s lots of interhouse rivalry,” Gopal added. “It’s great because it means you legally have an excuse to make fun of all the Malevolent kids.”

“No you don’t! We’re Benevolent, so we’re supposed to be better than that! Don’t stoop to their level!”

“Hehe… I was kidding, totally…”

“So yeah, that’s the house system.” Ying shut the book. “I think we should keep our first lesson short since you have a detention. Better to get that over with…”

“I’ll show you to the kitchens,” Gopal said, “but don’t expect me to go inside. I’m not getting dragged into that, thanks.”

“Neither am I! I’d rather die than eat those cookies!”

“You _would_ die if you ate those cookies!”

“I know right?!”

This was such a freaking weird school, honestly. Boboiboy stood up. “Thank you for the lesson, Ying.”

She winked at him and gave him a salute. “No problem! Good luck for your detention!”

Several other students in the room were also whispering wishes of good luck at him, giving him little gestures of encouragement. Except the knight, of course, who just rolled his eyes and let out a quiet, “Hmph!”

Huh… what was his problem?

-

Gopal dropped Boboiboy off just outside the kitchens. The student representative was already waiting there to meet him, and excitedly dragged him inside.

“Hi Boboiboy! You ready to make cookies?”

“Uh yeah, of course, uh…” _Wait, what was her name again?_ “…Mimi?”

“Mimi?!” Her polite demeanour vanished in an instant, with fire and brimstone replacing it.

“Um… Hannah?”

“My name is YAYA!” she snapped.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot…”

He had never been any good at remembering names. Luckily Yaya seemed to have calmed down already.

“It’s okay. Just try to remember for next time, okay? Now come on, I already asked the chefs for extra materials in advance and the previous class already cleaned the kitchen after their cooking lessons so we’re all ready to go!”

He nodded and followed her towards all the rather high-tech cooking equipment. It looked so out of place with the medieval aesthetic of the Academy – but then again, space travel and robots didn’t really fit in with that aesthetic either.

“Can you mix these for me?” Yaya asked, shoving a bowl and a bunch of ingredients towards him.

“Sure…”

It wasn’t too difficult, really, making sure to do what she asked and trying not to get it wrong and set off her temper. He had no idea what he was doing, but considering what everyone had told him about these deadly cookies, maybe Yaya didn’t either. Whatever – not his place to judge. He just had to keep his mouth shut and keep going.

It didn’t take too long for the cookies to be ready for… well, cooking.

“Now we have to just wait,” Yaya said, sliding the tray of raw cookies into the oven and shutting the door. “These ovens are cutting-edge technology so it’ll only take a few minutes! Isn’t that fascinating? I think we’ll be learning about the science behind it later in the year, I’m so excited!”

“If I even survive that long,” Boboiboy said, leaning his head on his hands and vaguely thinking about almost getting blown up earlier.

“What do you mean?”

“I found out that the student who’s trying to kill me is Adu Du. And he won’t rest until I’m dead.”

“Really? Oh no, that’s awful!”

“I know right? Are you sure you can’t give him a detention?”

“I’m sorry, I really can’t…”

“But he tried to put a bomb in my chamber earlier!”

“Hmm…” Yaya frowned in thought. “That’s very dangerous, even if it’s not against the rules. I’ll talk to Papa Zola and see what can be done to keep you safe.”

“Phew, thank you…”

There was a ping from the oven. Yaya put on a mitt and opened the door. “Yay, cookies are done!”

“Already?!”

“Yes, I told you they’d be quick! And they look delicious!”

She pulled the tray out and laid it on the table. Sure enough, the cookies were somehow baked to perfection within about one minute.

“Go ahead, try one!” She picked one up and held it out at him. “Please, go on! Don’t be shy!”

Ying and Gopal’s warnings were ringing in his head. What had they said? Brain haemorrhaging and organ failure or something? Would that be painful?

“Uh, it’s okay, I’m not hungry,” he said, grinning nervously, but she did not let up.

“Aw, but we worked so hard to make these! You have to try at least one!”

He took a close look at the cookie.

Well… it _looked_ okay, didn’t it? Just like a normal cookie.

Yaya was giving him such a suspiciously sweet smile, there was no way she wasn’t a few seconds away from blowing her top and force-feeding him the cookie anyway. He was starting to suspect that that was the kind of person she was.

He took the cookie in his hand and raised it to his mouth.

Surely one tiny bite couldn’t hurt, right…?

-

He opened his eyes. Where was he? What was going on?

“Oh good, he’s awake!”

“I’m so glad he’s not dead!”

“He’s already nearly died so many times, poor thing…”

Gopal, Ying, Yaya and Tok Aba were all standing over him, looking at him with concern. Looking down, he noticed that he seemed to be lying on some kind of hospital bed. He quickly sat up.

“What happened?”

“You fainted after eating Yaya’s cookie!” Gopal said. “Didn’t I warn you not to eat them?”

“Hey, this is nothing to do with my cookies!” Yaya insisted. “Poor Boboiboy has suffered so many near-death experiences lately, he must be under a lot of stress! That’s probably why he fainted!”

“Oh really? Then why did he faint exactly after taking one bite, huh?”

“Maybe Adu Du poisoned them or something… my cookies would never do this to anyone…”

“Don’t blame this on Adu Du!”

“Stop bickering, you two,” Ying said. “The important thing is that Boboiboy’s okay. How are you feeling, Boboiboy?”

He shrugged. “I think I’m okay…”

Tok Aba gave him a pat on the back. “Good! Imagine what I would’ve had to tell your parents if you had died, huh?”

Rather bitterly, he wondered if his parents would actually care.

“Anyway,” Tok Aba continued, “tomorrow morning I’m opening a café in the Academy marketplace to raise some money for buying a new warp drive. Stop by for some hot chocolate, alright? Might make you feel better!”

Gopal leapt to his feet instantly. “HOT CHOCOLATE? DID YOU SAY HOT CHOCOLATE?”

“Yep, that’s my speciality!”

“Oooh oooh! Can I have some? I’m Boboiboy’s best friend, can I get it for free?”

“No, of course not!”

“Awww…”

Boboiboy swung his legs off the bed and carefully stood up. Yep – he was feeling fine. Still a little dizzy, maybe with a bit of a headache, but aside from that there seemed to be no lasting consequences.

His memory was slowly returning to him from the moment he had taken a bite of the cookie.

Oh… that horrendous, absolutely _vile_ taste…

He shuddered. Never again.

“By the way, all your fans and admirers left you flowers and gifts telling you to get well soon!” Ying said, gesturing at the table beside him that was stacked high with boxes and strange alien plants.

“Really? How long was I passed out for?”

“About 15 minutes.”

“They sent these here that quickly?!”

“Of course! You’re famous and popular, remember?”

“Oh yes…”

“I think some of this is chocolate,” Gopal said, picking up the boxes and inspecting them. “We can share it, right? I mean, your stomach must be delicate after eating that cookie and almost dying so you probably shouldn’t eat these in case they’ll make you sick. And they can’t go to waste. So I should eat them instead. Right? It’s just logical.”

“Gopal, I feel fine.” He quickly grabbed several of the boxes, hoping he’d be able to keep them away from his roommate for when he got hungry later.

“Well you should probably rest anyway. Take some of these back to our room, and uh… leave the rest here. For no particular reason or anything. Just don’t want you carrying too much at one time, of course! We can’t have you fainting again!”

“I’m not going to faint, sheesh!”

He piled up as many boxes as he could, then headed off back to his chamber.

-

It had been a while since he’d talked to his parents. Dumping the boxes down on the bed, he opened up the telephone-tablet thing that he’d been given before leaving his planet and tried video calling his father.

“Hello?”

Ah yes, finally his dad had picked up for once! It was so refreshing to actually see him!

“Hi dad, I’ve reached the school,” he said.

“Oh hello son, it’s you!” His father looked quite busy, like he was in the middle of something. “Good, good… Wait, weren’t you meant to get there weeks ago?”

“The warp drive on our spaceship got stolen, we already sent you a message about it.”

“You did? Uh… yep, I definitely remember that.”

Boboiboy shuffled nervously. “Dad, there’s a student here who keeps trying to kill me, it’s kind of creepy, I don’t know what to do…”

His father simply laughed. “Good, that’ll teach you some independence!”

“Independence? Dad???”

“Sorry son, I have to go – talk to you some other time, okay? Have fun, learn some good things at that school, okay? Bye!”

“Wait–”

But it was too late. The great King Amato had already hung up.

Boboiboy sighed, smacking the phone against his forehead. There was really no point trying to tell his dad things, was there? He’d just have to sort out this whole “evil alien trying to assassinate him” thing himself.

At least he had friends here, people who were willing to help him. That was more than could be said for back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, Ochobot shows up.
> 
> Chapter after that... huehuehue. A certain emo dude makes his ACTUAL proper appearance. Heh. Then the fun can begin.


	3. This is so sad Ochobot play Despacito

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since no one in this fic has any powers etc, Ochobot doesn't really have any purpose. However, Ochobot is Baby and therefore deserves to be in this fic, so I'm putting him in anyway because I love him.
> 
> Idiot emo tsundere incoming in one more chapter.

Tok Aba’s new café was in the centre of one of the courtyards, outdoors with circular chairs and tables to sit around. By the time Boboiboy got there the next morning it already seemed to be a huge hit with the students – most of the tables were full.

“Morning, Boboiboy!” Tok Aba said as he walked over to the counter, putting a mug of hot chocolate in front of him. “Feeling better?”

“I’m fine now, thanks,” Boboiboy replied.

“Good! Anyway, have some hot chocolate, you’ll need it for your first day of proper school.”

Boboiboy was just about to pick up the mug when it was snatched right away from him. He turned to see Gopal beside him, chugging down the hot chocolate like there was no tomorrow.

“Hey! That was mine!”

Gopal slammed the empty mug back down on the counter, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just really had to taste it! I’d heard so much about this legendary chocolate, Adu Du is literally willing to commit murder for it, so I needed to try it as soon as I could! And oh… it’s _so good_ …”

“I’m glad you like it,” Tok Aba said. “Now pay up.”

“What?”

“It’s not free! Give me money!”

“I, uh…” Gopal chuckled nervously. “I don’t have any money with me…”

Tok Aba rolled his eyes. “Well I’ll make a note of it, and you can pay me back later. Here you go, Boboiboy.”

He passed Boboiboy another mug, which he gladly took and started drinking before Gopal could get his hands on it again. Ah… the familiar taste of Tok Aba’s hot chocolate. He would never get tired of it. While killing was pretty extreme, he could definitely see where Adu Du was coming from, even if he didn’t approve.

A little green alien cat hopped up onto the counter. Tok Aba gave it a stroke, and it curled its tail around his arm.

“Have you met Cattus yet?” he asked them. “The local cat who’s become the Benevolence mascot. He likes it here, so I think I’ll make him the mascot of my café too.”

Boboiboy grinned and gave Cattus a stroke. Gopal, on the other hand, leapt off his seat and took several steps back.

“Ugh! Keep it away from me, thanks. Shoo! Shoo!”

Cattus glared at him and dashed off out of sight.

“Ahh, that’s better…”

Tok Aba did not look impressed. “If you’ve finished your drinks, it’s probably time for you to head to class. Stop scaring away my customers.”

“That mangy cat is a customer?”

“Of course he’s a customer, don’t insult him!”

Boboiboy grabbed Gopal by the arm and began dragging him off. “Come on, let’s get to class…”

“I’ll be back for more hot chocolate later!” Gopal called over his shoulder.

-

“Welcome to class, Boboiboy!” Papa Zola said from the front of the room, gesturing towards the side where Boboiboy was sitting. “We have been eagerly awaiting your arrival! It just hasn’t been the same without you!”

All the other students were craning round in their seats to stare at him with tears in their eyes. He just grinned nervously. The kid on the desk behind him threw confetti at him, and one in the corner played a fanfare on the trumpet. Was this… was this all really necessary?

“I have been informed by our student representative that unfortunately you are in grave danger,” Papa Zola said, the smile disappearing from his face and being replaced with a look of grim determination. “A student from the House of Malevolence is trying to assassinate you.”

There were shocked gasps from all around the room.

“Well do not worry! Papa Zola has a plan!”

He pulled a little yellow spherical robot out from behind the desk. The robot whirred to life and floated up above the desk, little bendy arms trailing from its sides.

“This here is Ochobot, one of the many robot sidekicks that we have available at the Academy. Alas, these sidekicks are usually reserved for Malevolent students, and I have no wish to break the rules. However, your case is extraordinary! We must find some way to protect you so that you do not die, and we do not lose such a wonderful student! I have made the decision that this robot is now your sidekick, and will help keep you safe from threats.”

Ochobot’s electronic face lit up into a pixelly smile, and he floated over to go sit on Boboiboy’s desk. “I’m Ochobot! Nice to meet you!”

Boboiboy couldn’t help but smile – this little robot was so cute! “Nice to meet you too!”

“Ochobot doesn’t have any combat abilities so he’s kind of useless but I did my best within the rules,” Papa Zola mumbled at top speed. “ANYWAY! Now to begin our lesson!”

Wait, what?

This little robot, who had been assigned to protect him… couldn’t even do that much?

Well, at least hopefully he’d make a nice new friend. Though what was the point of having friends if Boboiboy was likely to die at any given moment…

-

The first school day passed without much incident. There had been no assassination attempts as of yet, and having adorable little Ochobot around was pretty fun. Boboiboy had never had a robot sidekick before. He hadn’t interacted much with robots at all, actually. He knew his father had one, but it wasn’t like he saw much of his father anyway.

“Are you gonna eat those?” Gopal asked, pointing at the chocolates from yesterday that were still unopened on the table in their chamber.

“Of course I’m going to eat them!” Boboiboy said. He quickly got up and grabbed them. “You already had lots, these ones are mine now.”

“Aw, are you sure?”

“Yes!”

He peeled the wrapper off one of them. The note on it said that it was from a student called “Abdul Dudu” – whoever that was. Probably someone he hadn’t met yet.

Ochobot drifted over. “I wish I could eat things…”

“Can you not eat?”

“Nope, I’m a robot. The most I can do is scan the ingredients in food and imagine the tastes, but…”

Ochobot scanned the chocolate in Boboiboy’s hand with a little blue laser from his forehead. He suddenly gasped and slapped it away from him.

“Boboiboy, don’t eat that!”

“Huh? Why not?”

“It’s not chocolate!”

“Really? What is it?”

“Poison!”

Poison?! Boboiboy scurried back, leaping onto the bed. Gopal seemed to have done the same on the opposite side of the room.

“Who would be sending you poison?” Ochobot mused, poking the poisoned chocolate bar carefully with one of his metallic fingers.

“The note says it’s from Abdul Dudu,” Boboiboy said.

“Hmm…” Ochobot scanned the note. “The handwriting on this matches the handwriting on the forged document allowing the Malevolent student Adu Du into the Academy.”

Boboiboy smacked himself on the forehead. “Abdul Dudu – Adu Du – of course! It must have been him who sent me the poison!”

“You mean…” Ochobot’s face lit up. “…I just thwarted an assassination attempt?”

“You did!” Boboiboy leapt off the bed and hugged the little robot. “Thank you, Ochobot! You saved my life!”

“You’re welcome! I’ll scan all your food from now on, just in case!”

“Thank you thank you thank you so much!”

Gopal was still standing on his bed, staring at the poison in shock. “Poisoning food… how could he sink to such a low, low level…”

“I don’t know, I thought him trying to kill me because he wants unlimited hot chocolate was already a pretty low level,” Boboiboy said, rolling his eyes, but Gopal did not appear to be listening.

“It could have been _me_ who ate that chocolate… I was so close to dying! I literally could have been poisoned! First almost being blown up by a bomb, and now this! Your friendship is dangerous for my health, Boboiboy!”

“Well my existence is dangerous for my health!”

Gopal finally hopped off the bed and put an arm around him. “Don’t worry, I will absolutely risk the danger. Together, me and Ochobot will keep you safe from all threats. Ochobot can scan your food, and if Adu Du comes near you, I’ll beat him up. Good plan?”

“Uhh… do you even know any combat?”

“Nope.”

Boboiboy sighed. “Well thank you for your enthusiasm anyway…”

“Anytime. That’s what best friends are for. And since I’m your best friend, you’ll convince your granddad to let me have free hot chocolates, right?”

Ugh, not that again. Boboiboy ignored Gopal and went over to his schoolbag to find his homework. He’d already started it, but it was probably best to get it out of the way sooner rather than later. After all, he had tutoring to catch up on too. Lagging behind was only going to make things more difficult for him.

Huh… where was his homework?

“Gopal, Ochobot, have you seen my homework?”

“I haven’t even seen _my_ homework,” Gopal said. “That’s because I haven’t done it yet.”

“Hmm, I can’t find it.” Boboiboy tipped his bag upside down and emptied it out on his bed. “I definitely put it in here earlier!”

“Let me guess – Adu Du stole your homework. That’s going to go down so well with teacher Papa tomorrow, right? _Sir, aliens ate my homework!_ You’ll get a detention for sure.”

“I’ll… I’ll just have to do it again…”

This was not going to be fun. Seriously, where had his homework gone?! Trying to kill him was one thing, but was Adu Du resorting to petty theft now too? What reason would he even have?

-

Over the course of the next week, Boboiboy’s homework mysteriously vanished several more times. He’d had to hurry to catch up the missing work, and as a result, his grades were already starting to suffer. Of course, there was no shortage of students offering their own homework for him to copy from, but he was fairly certain Yaya would physically kill him if he did such a thing.

At least there hadn’t been any more assassination attempts since then…

It wasn’t until the weekend, when he was sat at the café with his friends, that he noticed Probe rifling through his bag in the corner of the courtyard.

“Hey! Thief!” He jumped up off his seat and began to chase after Probe.

“You didn’t finish your hot chocolate, can I have it?” he heard Gopal calling from behind him.

Pfff, he didn’t care. Probe had his homework right in those weird robot claws of his, and he wasn’t going to let him get away with this!

“Don’t worry Boboiboy, I got this!”

Ying whizzed past him at top speed. Wow – she was a really fast runner. Who would have known?

He watched as she leapt at Probe in a rather ferocious flying kick and knocked the homework out of his hands. She caught the pieces of paper out of the air in triumph.

“Hah, got it! Here you go, Boboiboy!”

She held it out at him. He ran over and grabbed it – thank goodness, his homework was safe! He was going to go mad if he had to redo it, yet again.

Ying turned back towards Probe. “Why have you been stealing Boboiboy’s homework, huh?”

Probe hid behind his hands. “It wasn’t my idea, it was Mister Boss!”

“Way to throw your boss under the bus! Have you no shame?”

By this point the others had caught up too, Gopal trying to down the remains of the hot chocolate as he ran.

“We have you surrounded,” Yaya said, pulling her clipboard out and clicking her pen menacingly. “Just because you’re sidekick to a Malevolent student, it doesn’t mean it’s right for you to steal a Benevolent’s homework! I’ll be writing this down and passing it onto head teacher Papa Zola.”

“Where’s Adu Du?” said Ying. “If he’s the one that put you up to this then why doesn’t he show his face, huh? Is he too scared?”

The window several metres up the wall slammed open, and Adu Du’s head popped out. “I’M NOT SCARED!”

Probe waved his arms around. “Mister Boss! I’m so sorry I got caught!”

“Shut up! You’ve ruined everything!”

“Why have you been stealing my homework?” Boboiboy asked, clenching his fists.

“So you’d get stressed and demotivated and die of despair, of course!”

“Seriously?”

Adu Du sighed and rolled his eyes. “Violent methods of killing you weren’t working, and neither were sneaky methods, so I had to use a long, indirect one. But obviously it failed, because Probe has no idea how to steal things without being caught!”

Probe lowered his head in shame. “I’m so sorry!”

“Well what are you waiting for? Get out of there! Get back here so we can decide what to do next!”

Gopal brandished his fists. “Oh no you don’t. You steal my friend’s homework? Then you have to deal with me. Come at me! I’m not scared to fight!”

Probe smacked him. Gopal immediately fell to the floor crying.

“OW! O-ow… that h-hurt…”

“What was that for?” said Yaya. “It’s against the rules for anyone except a Neutral student to hurt a robot! Not even Malevolents are allowed to do that! You shouldn’t fight Probe!”

“Who is m-making these stupid rules?” Gopal sniffed.

“Who cares? The rules are there for a reason, you should follow them! And anyway, it’s bad to hurt robots!”

“Probe’s getting away!”

“Don’t try to change the subject! Robots are people too, and you should think twice before…”

Boboiboy drowned them out and just watched in despair as Probe zoomed past them and into the nearest door. No point following for now – he had his homework back, at least, and knew who had stolen it.

Did they really think killing him by doom and despair was a viable option? Seemed like they would stop at nothing until he was dead.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Ochobot floating there beside him.

“It’s okay Boboiboy, I have an idea. Malevolent students aren’t allowed to hurt me, right? Since I’m a robot? So I’ll look after your homework for you! That way they can never steal it again.”

He handed the papers to Ochobot. “Thanks, Ochobot. Papa Zola was wrong. You’re not useless!”

“But I don’t know any combat! What if Adu Du tries to kill you violently again? Who will protect you then?”

Boboiboy turned to his bickering friends. “Are any of you good at combat?”

“I am!”

“Not you, Gopal.”

“I can run fast,” Ying said, shrugging.

“I train weights at the gym every day,” Yaya said.

“But do you guys know how to fight? Like how the Honourable Combat students do? The knights?”

They shook their heads.

Hmm. If only he had been a Neutrality student, then he could learn combat himself and be able to protect himself. Or at least he’d have friends who knew how to wield a sword and shield. There was no way for him to switch into Neutrality either – he was stuck as Benevolence until the end.

Wasn’t there some other way for him to keep himself safe?


	4. Getcha head in the game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day? It's more likely than you think!
> 
> Thanks to @findmeinthevoid who has been gushing at me about this fic so much that it makes me really easily motivated to write it.
> 
> And thanks to Fang, who also makes me really easily motivated to write it.

Having been stuck in space for several weeks before reaching the Academy, Boboiboy had missed the first interhouse tournament. But that had apparently just been a warm-up anyway. Now it was time for the second one, and this one was the first true, _real_ one, the one that everyone took seriously. This one meant business.

“Who is going to take part in each of the four sports?” Papa Zola boomed through a megaphone – though considering that the Benevolent students were all huddled quite nearby, the megaphone was pretty unnecessary.

Yaya pointed at the board next to her that had the various sports written on it. “Here are the options: archery, jousting, Honourable Combat, and football.”

“I nominate Boboiboy for football!” Gopal yelled, grabbing Boboiboy’s hand and lifting it high in the air. “He’s awesome! He should totally represent us!”

Boboiboy shook his hand out of Gopal’s grasp. “Hey, I’m not even that good at football!”

But the other students had already started cheering in support, so Papa Zola went over and wrote his name on the board. “Boboiboy will be on the football team of justice! Excellent! We need four more students to do it!”

“I nominate Gopal,” Boboiboy said, narrowing his eyes at his so-called friend.

“Brilliant idea! Gopal will also be on the football team of justice! Anyone else?”

Ying ran over to go write her name on the board. “I’ll do it too! Boboiboy is my friend, I’ll support him.”

“How very noble and honourable of you, I’m so proud of my amazing students! Now we just need two more team members!”

Yaya clicked her pen, that oddly tranquil yet terrifying smile on her face. “As the student representative for the House of Benevolence and an excellent sportswoman alongside my academic achievements, I should do it.”

“You’re not the _best_ sportswoman though,” Ying muttered.

“Excuse me? What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing…”

“Good.” Yaya wrote her name on the board. “One more team member required, head teacher Papa.”

Papa Zola put the megaphone back up and yelled at the crowd. “Who will join the football team of justice? Don’t make me pick someone at random!”

The students were so silent, even the wind was louder than them.

“Alright fine! Since you will not volunteer yourselves, I will volunteer someone for you! You there – you will be our final team member!”

He pointed at the smallest kid in the house.

“Are you sure you want Iwan to be on our team?” Yaya asked, wincing slightly.

“I don’t really care who’s on the team. The only thing I care about is whether or not you win. So go forth and win, my students of justice! I will be watching from the stands!” He scampered off at top speed towards the tournament area.

Iwan let out a squeak.

“It’s okay,” Yaya said, writing his name on the board. “We can do this. And in the meantime, I nominate myself for archery, jousting, and Honourable Combat.”

“Hey, I nominate myself for Honourable Combat too!” Ying snapped, grabbing the pen off her.

“Don’t snatch! I hadn’t finished writing!”

“You’re already doing like three sports, don’t be greedy! Give me a chance too!”

“Go away! You’ll make us lose!”

Boboiboy ignored them and started trudging over to the tournament area. Hopefully he wouldn’t let his house down…

-

The Neutrality students absolutely dominated the jousting session. There were two in particular, the full-fledged knights who had been guarding the library the other day, who stood out.

“Looks like the Shield siblings win again,” Ying said, leaning against the rail in the stands. “How can we stand a chance against them? They have stronger weapons, faster horses, and ridiculously sturdy armour! No one can beat them!”

“What if we got armour like that next time?” Boboiboy asked.

“But we’re not allowed, only Neutrals are allowed.”

Well that was ridiculous. The rules at this school really didn’t make any sense sometimes.

The archery session that followed was again, dominated by the Shield siblings. They hit their target several times in a row almost effortlessly. How could anyone be that good?

“Surely if those are students from the University then they’re not allowed to participate against us,” Gopal said, frowning.

“Everyone’s allowed to participate,” Ying explained. “It’s just that the University is mostly filled with knights anyway, since no one else usually stays – OOH YAYA GOT A BULLS-EYE! YAY! GO YAYA!”

The entire Benevolence stand leapt to their feet to cheer for their representative. Yaya grinned and waved back, clearly proud of herself. She hadn’t done as well as the Shield siblings, of course – but had she done well enough to beat the Malevolents?

The Malevolent archer in question stepped out into the range. It was…

Oh, it was Adu Du. Was he actually good at archery? He looked so small, the bow was far bigger than him. There was no way it could be easy for him to do as well as the others had done. Anyway, they would all find out in a minute…

The next second, Adu Du had turned towards the stands and shot an arrow directly at Boboiboy.

It whizzed past his ear and landed in the wood beside him with a thwack. Out of instinct he ducked, even though it was too late.

“Ugh, I missed!”

Adu Du shot another arrow. And another. And another.

The good thing was, Adu Du did not seem to be particularly good at archery. All of his shots were missing, all either slightly too far to the left or too low down and falling to the floor too early.

The bad news was, having arrows shot at him was _very stressful_ , and by the time Adu Du had run out of arrows, Boboiboy was wondering if he’d end up having a heart attack from the sheer terror of it.

The Benevolents were all booing Adu Du – and surprisingly, so were the Malevolents.

“You just wasted our chance at beating those guys!”

“Can’t you kill your enemy some other time? You didn’t hit the target even once! Now our house will get zero points!”

“You’d better win the football instead, you twerp!”

Adu Du just scowled. “I’ll get you next time, Boboiboy!”

“Are you okay?” Ochobot looked at Boboiboy in concern.

“I’m f-fine,” he replied, taking a deep breath. “He didn’t hit me, so…”

Ying was looking murderous. “That was so rude of him! I hope he’s in the Honourable Combat tournament so I can beat him up…”

“Yeah, please do!”

Boboiboy was half inclined to go and fight that alien himself, he was so annoyed. Shooting at him in the middle of a tournament! Really!

He was still on edge as he watched Ying go down to the pavilion to be given her weapon for the Honourable Combat part of the tournament. Maybe it was better that he wasn’t participating in that one – knowing his luck, Adu Du would cheat his way into getting something absurdly overpowered and then batter his brains out.

“There should be an eating competition,” Gopal mused. “I’d win that one.”

Boboiboy rolled his eyes. “I know you would.”

The Shield siblings were not taking part in the Honourable Combat tournament, apparently. It seemed to be some other knight – one who was a good deal shorter than them, so maybe a knight-in-training instead.

Boboiboy leaned forward to get a closer look. Was that…?

The knight took off his hood, revealing a mess of spiky dark purple hair.

Yep, it was. That was the moody knight from in the library the other day.

“Isn’t that guy the only guy in the Academy who doesn’t stan you?” Gopal asked, yawning.

“Surely lots of people don’t stan me.”

“Well the Malevolents certainly don’t. But all the Benevolents do, and most of the Neutrals. Except that guy, of course. I think he hates you.”

The knight had the usual sour look on his face. He adjusted his visor and grabbed one of the designated weapons. Wow, even the armour he was wearing was dark in colour, and seemed lighter than the others, heck, it didn’t even have sleeves…

“Maybe he doesn’t hate me, maybe he’s just emo,” Boboiboy suggested.

“I guess that’s true. Look at his hair.”

The tournament was starting – the emo knight vs a Malevolent student. Boboiboy continued watching the knight carefully.

“He has red eyes, though… and purple hair… He’s not human, he’s one of those aliens Ying taught us about the other day. The ones who look similar to humans.”

Gopal squinted. “Sheesh, how can you see all that from here?”

“Just look more closely.”

“Well whatever. He might be an emo alien, you know. I’m sure those exist.”

“Yeah, maybe…”

Boboiboy watched the tournament somewhat wistfully. He couldn’t help feeling like somewhere in another universe, in another life, he himself might be good at combat too, in his own way. But evidently not here. All he could do was watch as the emo knight gracefully beat his opponent without much effort, and then proceeded to beat Ying too.

The Neutrals gave some half-hearted cheers to their champion, but it was drowned out by the booing from the Benevolents. The knight looked less than impressed as he marched off back towards the Neutrality stands.

“ARE YOU READY FOR THE FOOTBALL MATCH?” Papa Zola boomed through the megaphone, right in Boboiboy’s ear. He jumped out of his skin, falling right off his seat.

“Y-yes teacher!”

“Good! Go to the pitch now, my Benevolent students of justice!”

Full of nervous energy, both from the earlier arrow incident and the fact that his ear was still ringing, Boboiboy headed down away from the stands. Oh boy, hopefully this was going to go well…

-

As soon as he stepped out onto the pitch there were deafening cheers from the Benevolence and Neutrality stands. Even some of the Malevolent students seemed to be cheering for him – perhaps just to spite Adu Du for losing them the archery tournament earlier.

“Come on team, we can do this!” Yaya said, giving them all an encouraging smile and thumbs up. “Neutrality are notoriously bad at football, so it won’t be a problem to beat them. But our first match is against Malevolence. We just have to make sure we win this, and…”

The Malevolent team sauntered out onto the pitch. There were three humans, and…

Adu Du and Probe.

Boboiboy just put his head in his hands and groaned.

“Are you ready to die, Boboiboy?” Adu Du said, followed by an evil laugh.

“Don’t you mean be defeated?” he called back.

“No, I mean die! Because you won’t survive this match! Probe, show them your upgrades!”

“Yes Mister Boss!” Probe said, giving him a salute. He pressed a little button on his side and immediately grew three times his height, sprouting huge rocket-powered arms and legs. Boboiboy heard a thud from behind him and turned to see that poor Iwan had fainted in shock. What a start this was turning out to be.

“Hey, that’s cheating!” Yaya snapped. “Robot sidekicks are not allowed to take part in the tournament!”

“We’re Malevolence, we’re supposed to cheat,” Adu Du replied.

“Well, I suppose that’s true… but you’re not supposed to modify your robot! That’s illegal!”

“We’re supposed to do illegal things too.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that… Those are some impressive upgrades…”

“Exactly! And we will use them to kill Boboiboy!”

Boboiboy stepped forwards, temper rising. “Oh yeah? How?”

“Like this! Kick the ball at him, Probe!”

Probe did not need to be told twice. He took a running jump towards the ball, then used his newly powered super-strength legs to kick it with all the energy he could.

-

Boboiboy opened his eyes, back in the familiar hospital room he had been in after eating one of Yaya’s cookies. His head was absolutely killing him – what had happened?

Oh yeah… Probe had kicked the football at him…

The football match!

He sat up. “Did we win? Did we lose? What happened?”

Tok Aba was sat by his side, and immediately handed him a mug of hot chocolate. “Relax, Boboiboy. Your team won the match.”

“Oh good…”

“Is he awake?” Gopal was rushing over to him. “Oh yes, you are! You’re awake! I’m so glad! I thought you had died!”

Yaya, Ying and Ochobot all ran over to see him too. He wondered if this was going to become a recurring thing. If this continued, he would have to just move into the hospital wing permanently.

“There’s no lasting damage,” said Ochobot, giving him a scan. “He would have died if he hadn’t had his hat on his head protecting him from the full impact.”

“I can’t believe Adu Du and Probe would do such a thing!” Yaya said, scribbling furiously on her notepad. “This is too much violence! You definitely need more protection than this. I’ve talked to head teacher Papa about it and he promised he’d find a solution. If he doesn’t, I’ll find one myself!”

“If you die for real, everyone will riot!” Ying said. “Just look at the mountain of gifts you’ve received this time!”

Boboiboy glanced at the overloaded table. “Uh Ochobot, any poison in there?”

Ochobot gave it a quick scan. “Not this time, thankfully.”

“Good.” He got up off the bed, going over and picking up one of the chocolates. He really needed it. “So how was the match?”

“We had to play with just the three of us,” Yaya explained. “You were knocked out and Iwan had fainted. But we still managed to beat Malevolence. Not that anyone was really paying any attention – the crowd was too worried about you! They’ll all be so happy to know that you’re okay.”

Well, except the Malevolence kids, and that one emo knight from Neutrality, of course…

The door opened and Papa Zola stepped into the room. “Boboiboy, I’m so happy you’re not dead! This time Adu Du has gone too far, shooting arrows at you and trying to crack your skull like an egg. But have no fear! I have a solution this time!”

An actual solution? Oh, thank goodness! He wasn’t sure how much more of this stress and danger he could take.

“Yes, from now on you will be under the protection of a knight from the House of Neutrality! With someone skilled in the art of Honourable Combat present, Adu Du will think twice before using violence on you again! And if he does try, he will be stopped by someone with skills far outweighing his own!”

Boboiboy was going to get his own knight? For real? Just like in the old medieval tales? He bounced up and down in excitement. This was going to be awesome!

“And which better knight to serve you than the one who has proven his skill today itself, by winning the Honourable Combat tournament? May I present to you: Fang!”

He stepped aside and allowed the knight into the room.

Sure enough, the winner of the Honourable Combat tournament from earlier walked in. Close up he seemed even more emo than he had from a distance – the purple clothes, the longcoat replacing his earlier armour, the dead-inside expression on his face.

The knight – Fang – stopped a decent distance away from Boboiboy and shot him a glare so intense, it was like he was trying to set fire to him with his brain. Boboiboy just grinned back hesitantly, hoping he looked a lot more friendly in return.

“Um hi Fang! Nice to meet you!”

Fang simply turned his nose up with a quiet, “Hmph.”

“So uh… good tournament today, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

His voice was so low and smooth, it was like he was trying to be extra edgy and emo on purpose. Boboiboy was not sure what to make of him.

“Fang will be here to protect you outside of class hours,” Papa Zola went on. “He is the best and most accomplished knight-in-training in the entirety of the House of Neutrality. You are in safe hands! And my job here is done.”

He turned and left the room with a dramatic swish of his cape.

A rather awkward silence then prevailed, as everyone tried to think of something to say. It was eventually broken by Tok Aba.

“Hey Fang, want some hot chocolate? Or anything else? I brought some snacks from my café…”

Fang paused for a second, as if was considering whether to even reply or not. He finally decided on actually saying something. “Do you have any red carrot donuts?”

“Not with me, but there’s some back at the café.”

Beneath his visor, his eyes suddenly had a very uncharacteristic sparkle. “Can we go there now?”

Tok Aba looked at Boboiboy. “Well, can we?”

Boboiboy nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”

“Great!”

Right, so this weird emo alien knight liked red carrot donuts. That seemed to be one way to get him to open up.

And maybe… eventually form a friendship?


	5. (wake me up) WAKE ME UP INSIDE

Awkward silences were awkward. The five of them plus Ochobot were seated around the counter at Tok Aba’s café, sipping hot chocolate and munching on various snacks. Fang had already grabbed all the donuts and was hoarding them in front of him, not even trying to share.

Boboiboy watched out of the corner of his eye, the silence weighing on him. Should he say something? What should he even say to a knight? He had no clue how he was supposed to talk to knights in general, let alone someone who was specifically chosen to be _his_ knight.

The thought struck him – what if Fang was simply shy? Maybe that was why he wasn’t speaking, and was sitting hunched up in the corner keeping all his food to himself.

But then again, someone who was shy wouldn’t have chosen to take part in the Honourable Combat tournament…

“Well done on winning the tournament earlier,” he said, sliding his seat over a little and trying to put on a friendly smile. “You were really great.”

Fang did not smile back. “Huh, as if anyone cared.”

“What do you mean? Your house was cheering for you!”

“Not as much as they were cheering for _you_.” Fang shuffled his seat away again.

Oh… was he jealous? Hopefully he’d get over that in a little while.

“So Fang, what made you choose to be a knight?” Yaya asked, notepad out as usual.

“My family have always been knights.”

“How would you say your defence capabilities are?”

“The best in my house, obviously! Why else would Papa Zola pick me to defend this…” He glanced at Boboiboy with a look of mild disgust. “… _prince?”_

Yaya was looking between them, frowning. “Do you have something against princes?”

“All just heirs to the throne through blood alone, no hard work or effort involved, unlike knights, who actually have to work for the title.” He polished off the last donut. “There’s no more food – can we go now?”

“Hey, there’s plenty of food!” Gopal said, quickly cramming snacks into his mouth.

Fang ignored him and stood up. He slammed a small piece of paper down on the counter in front of Boboiboy. “My number. If I’m not around and someone tries to kill you… yeah. Don’t use it for any other reason.”

Boboiboy just blinked a few times. “Uh… okay?”

“Now am I allowed to leave? I have better things to be doing than babysitting some Combat-less prince.”

Boboiboy grabbed the piece of paper and stuffed it under his cap. “Fine, go…”

Fang turned and left without another word.

“Sheesh, what’s wrong with him?” Gopal said through a mouthful of food.

Ying whacked him in the arm. “Gross! Finish eating before you speak!”

Boboiboy leaned on the counter, still not sure what to make of this weird emo knight. So far he just seemed sort of… standoffish. Annoying. Grumpy. But maybe he was still in a bad mood for not getting appreciated much at the tournament earlier. Surely he couldn’t be so grumpy all the time, right?

“Everyone, be really nice to Fang,” Boboiboy said.

Gopal hurriedly chewed his food and gulped it down before speaking this time. “Why should we? He seems like a boring jerk.”

“He’s upset because he didn’t get much attention for winning the Honourable Combat. Maybe he’s nice the rest of the time!”

“Are you forgetting that he insulted all us princes and princesses?” Ying said, crossing her arms with a tilt of the head.

“Well he was kind of right, wasn’t he? We’re picked to be rulers because of our parents, and not because we earned it…”

His mind flashed back to his childhood in his palace. He didn’t remember ever learning anything that would be useful for the throne. His father had a very hands-off approach to teaching him, and as such, this school was the first place he was learning things that might actually directly help him. If it wasn’t for the Academy, who knew what kind of ruler he might eventually end up?

“Boboiboy is right,” said Yaya. “We should be nice to Fang. It’s important to treat others the way that you would want to be treated.”

“Ugh, you’re such a goody-two-shoes,” Gopal said, rolling his eyes and picking up yet another snack. “Have you forgotten Fang’s in a different house to us? He’s basically our enemy.”

“He’s in Neutrality, not Malevolence! The Neutral students don’t have anything against us. We have to remember who our real enemy is: Adu Du.”

Just hearing that cursed name made Boboiboy involuntarily jump. He really was starting to despise Adu Du – his head was still ringing a bit from the football hit earlier, and he was sure he wouldn’t be able to see archery the same way again. Couldn’t that stupid alien just give him a break?!

“Alright, fine.” Ying downed the last of her hot chocolate. “We’ll be nice to Fang. But if he keeps being mean to us, then we’ll stop.”

“Good. As long as he’s willing to protect Boboiboy no matter his feelings towards him, that’s the important thing.”

No matter his feelings…

Boboiboy had certainly wanted a knight. But he had expected said knight to, perhaps, actually _like_ him? After all, the vast majority of the knights here thought he was great! How unlucky was it that he got stuck with the one knight whose opinion of him was… less than stellar?

Well never mind. Maybe, by being nice enough to Fang, that would change.

-

It did not change. Over the following week, Boboiboy tried to be as polite as possible to his new knight, and his friends reluctantly followed suit – with little success.

Fang tended to traipse along behind them whenever he had to accompany them anywhere, keeping to himself and refusing to join the conversation unless directly asked a question. Whenever they all hung out, he would stand to the side, leaning against the wall and twirling his sword around rather threateningly.

It wasn’t a matter of shyness – Boboiboy had witnessed him speaking pretty openly and freely to his roommates, the knights who had won the archery and the jousting! It was unnerving to see that Fang had the _capability_ to be nice. He simply chose not to.

Because… because why?

“Don’t think of me as a prince!” Boboiboy said to him as he was being escorted to the Benevolence classroom for the day. “Just think of me as a random kid who goes to school here…”

“How can I forget you’re a prince when _that_ keeps happening?” Fang muttered, pointing to the classmates who were waiting outside the door throwing rose petals at Boboiboy and eagerly welcoming him into the room.

“But that’s not because I’m a prince!” Boboiboy insisted, trying to ignore the calls of _Your Highness!_ from the fans behind him. “It’s because I keep nearly dying.”

Fang crossed his arms and glared at him, leaning in close. “How many times have you nearly died since I became your knight?”

“Um… zero?”

“Exactly. Now have a good day, _Your Highness.”_

He walked off. Boboiboy clenched his fist, temper rising – then quickly reminded himself to knock it off. No getting mad at Fang. Fang was his knight, after all, there to protect him. It was true that Adu Du hadn’t tried to kill him since the tournament, so… maybe it was working?

-

That evening Boboiboy had expected to be helping Gopal search for where he had hidden his stash of cash, so that he could finally pay off his colossal chocolate debt to Tok Aba, but it turned out that Gopal had been neglecting his homework for so long that Yaya had no choice but to give him a detention.

“I have to clean the Malevolent chambers!” Gopal sobbed, wiping his tears away with Boboiboy’s sleeve. “How unfair is that?!”

Boboiboy yanked himself away. “Yeesh, get a tissue! And if you’d done your homework in the first place then you wouldn’t have got a detention!”

“Oh, but homework is so hard…”

“Any of us will help you with it.”

“He won’t,” Gopal said quietly, briefly tilting his head in the direction of Fang, who was being emo over by the wall, as usual.

“Well then don’t ask him, ask the rest of us!”

“Huh, whatever. I’d rather have a detention than be stuck with him all evening. Good luck, Boboiboy.”

“What do you mean good luck?”

“You don’t have me to protect you from the boredom of having to walk back to our chamber with him. Anyway, see you later!”

Boboiboy waved him off, his heart sinking. “Yeah, see you…”

It was true that the long walk back to his chamber would not be fun. Not when Fang had a habit of either ignoring him or snarking at him.

He turned to look at him and once more, tried to put on a positive smile. “Well come on then Fang, let’s get going…”

As usual, Fang’s reply was an overdramatic roll of the eyes. Good enough.

Boboiboy began walking down the corridor, his knight following at a distance. What was he going to do, honestly? It had already been a week since the tournament and nothing had improved. Well, at least Adu Du wasn’t constantly trying to kill him anymore… Had he given up? Boboiboy certainly hoped so. It had been a while since he’d seen that stupid green alien, and he hoped that would continue.

Not too far from his chamber, a bunch of fully-fledged knights from the University of Further Studies ran up to him waving sheets of paper at him.

“Boboiboy! Is that you?”

“We’re so honoured to meet you!”

“Can you sign these for us please?”

“You’re such a hero!”

Boboiboy took a step back, slightly overwhelmed. “Huh? Why do you want my autograph?”

“Because you’re famous, right?” one of the knights said. “Everyone knows you! You’re a celebrity here!”

A celebrity, really? Had all those near-death experiences really turned him into some kind of living legend?

Though he was facing away from Fang, he could practically feel those fiery red eyes glaring at him already. That petty, jealous, annoying, whiny brat would _not_ be happy to see Boboiboy getting yet more attention, that was for sure.

Boboiboy tentatively took one of the pens and signed the sheets of paper. “Uh, here you go.”

The knights beamed at him. “Thank you Boboiboy! You’re amazing!”

He watched as they ran past him, completely ignoring their own housemate who was standing just a few metres away. Yeah… this was not going to go down well.

Rather than having to face the wrath of Fang’s anger, Boboiboy elected not to say anything to him and instead just carried on walking, tripling his speed. Hopefully he would get to his chamber without any more incidents…

He had just reached the stairs when the decorative suit of armour next to him suddenly _moved_. It stuck its leg out with an almighty clunk of metal.

Too late to avoid it, Boboiboy tripped over and went tumbling down the stairs.

“Oof!” He sat up at the bottom, rubbing his head and looking back up at the landing.

The suit of armour opened its helmet, revealing none other than Adu Du standing inside.

“Mwahahaha! Finally, I have defeated Boboiboy!”

Boboiboy stood up and brushed himself off. “No you haven’t, I’m still alive!”

“What?!” Adu Du leaned out of the helmet, peering down the stairs. “How did you manage to not snap your neck?!”

“There’s only like 5 steps here!”

“But you should have died! Humans are so weak and pathetic, unlike us aliens–”

He didn’t get any further. Fang, having caught up, reached into the helmet and grabbed Adu Du by the throat. Then he flung him down the stairs with absolutely no mercy.

“OW!” Adu Du landed far more roughly, sliding along the ground before coming to a stop.

Boboiboy ran back up the stairs. “Fang, that was amazing–”

“Whatever. Just go to your chamber.”

Adu Du got to his feet, wincing. “I’ll… I’ll get you for this! How dare you throw me down the stairs?”

“You’re annoying,” Fang scoffed.

“But you hate Boboiboy, right? Just like me? Why don’t we team up?”

“I will never team up with you!”

“Fine! You’d better watch out then…”

Adu Du limped away.

Boboiboy turned to face Fang, a huge number of mixed thoughts running through his brain. That had been awesome – but did Fang really hate him?

“Are you gonna go or what?!”

Whoa – the bite in his voice! He did not sound happy at all.

“Do you really hate me?” Boboiboy asked.

“Thought it was pretty obvious.”

Wait, _seriously?_ Fang actually hated him, for real? Just for the crime of being a popular prince?!

“What is your problem?” Boboiboy snapped, his patience finally at an end. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“You know you’re all anyone in the House of Neutrality talks about, right?” Fang pushed up his visor, but the particular finger he did it with did even more to express his bad mood than his voice.

“So what?”

“So you haven’t done anything to deserve it! You just got lucky!”

Boboiboy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, having Malevolent students trying to kill me all the time is _lucky_ of course… Being tripped down the stairs, sooooo lucky…”

“I’ve actually worked hard!” Fang retorted, crossing his arms. “I’ve achieved the highest number of Neutrality house points in my year group so far!”

“Are you saying I haven’t been working hard?”

“You’re just… you… UGH! Just because you’re so popular, and attractive, it – it doesn’t mean you’re better than me!”

With that, Fang turned around with a swish of his longcoat and stormed off.

Boboiboy just rolled his eyes and started walking the other way, back to his chamber. Pff, that guy was really starting to get on his nerves now. All whiny and immature and bratty, and… and…

He stopped dead in his tracks.

Wait a second.

Did Fang just say…

Popular…

…and _attractive???_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shall now proceed to begin mocking the emo child mercilessly. It's fun.


	6. Anyway here's Wonderwall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out that the easiest way to get rid of writer's block is to just put down on paper literally the stupidest things you can come up with. It's been working for like 5 days in a row at this point so I think I will continue making this fic as stupid as possible.

“Detective Gopal strikes again!” Gopal said, dabbing and then sitting down at the café table.

“Pffff, since when has ‘Detective’ Gopal ever struck in the first place?” Ying muttered.

“Hey! Just because I’ve been offscreen from your life sometimes, doesn’t mean I’m not relevant! And I have a very relevant revelation to reveal to you.” He glanced around furtively and lowered his voice before continuing. “Fang… is actually a vampire!”

Boboiboy, sipping his hot chocolate, jumped at the mention of Fang’s name. He had been thinking about his knight so much recently, trying to figure out what exactly was going on in that weirdo’s head, that hearing anyone else talk about him too was just surreal.

“What makes you think that?” asked Yaya.

“Because he’s evil, of course.”

Ying slammed her drink down on the table. “Don’t be ridiculous! He’s a vampire, but not an evil one! He’s in the Neutral house, remember?”

“Wait, you think he’s a vampire too?” Yaya asked. “Just because he has red eyes and purple hair, it doesn’t make him a vampire!”

“Nah, but him having red eyes and purple hair _while being hot at the same time_ definitely makes him a vampire.”

Boboiboy choked on his drink. Fang, hot – ! Maybe if you squinted and looked at him from the right angle…

“Someone having red eyes and purple hair and being aesthetically pleasing does not make them a vampire,” Yaya said.

“But don’t forget he’s an _evil_ hot vampire with red eyes and purple hair!” Gopal added. “Not to mention, he’s emo and his name is literally Fang. That’s the most vampire thing you can be called.”

“He doesn’t sparkle in the sunlight.”

“Well he probably uses sunscreen, and the sparkling thing is a myth anyway.”

“Vampires are a myth!”

“No they’re not!”

“He’s just an alien, he’s not a vampire!”

“Couldn’t he be an alien vampire? A hot evil emo alien vampire?”

Boboiboy drowned them all out. The last thing Fang had said to him was still playing in his head on repeat.

_And attractive. And attractive. And attractive. And attractive. And attractive…_

Was it true? Did Fang really think that? If that was the case then it would be so easy to make fun of him over it. Too easy, really. Maybe that was why Fang was being all weird and jealous around him – trying to hide his feelings. Hah, that was hilarious! What a dweeb.

Unless… unless he’d just used that word in a general sense, and didn’t really mean it. After all, Ying and Gopal were currently outright calling Fang hot, and they didn’t seem to be meaning it.

Huh… Boboiboy could see where they were coming from, now that he thought about it – Fang really was quite “aesthetically pleasing”, as Yaya had so eloquently put it. The cute purple hair… those startlingly red eyes… biceps…

“Boboiboy! What do you think?”

He snapped out of his thoughts. “Huh?”

His friends were all staring at him. “Do you think Fang’s a vampire?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. Why don’t we just ask him?”

“Well he’s not here,” said Gopal.

Boboiboy pulled the piece of paper out from under his hat and dialled in the number. “Hello? Fang?”

As usual, Fang sounded like he’d just been forced to eat a litre of cold paint. “What do you want?”

“I wanted to ask you a question! Are you a vampire?”

“What? What kind of a question is that?! Did you really call me up just to ask me that?”

“Yep.”

“I told you to only call me if someone’s trying to kill you! Not for stupid chit-chat!”

“Aw, come on!” Boboiboy said, trying to sound as sweet as he could. “Don’t you want to make friends with the most popular boy at school? It’ll make you more popular too!”

It seemed to have the opposite effect. “I don’t need you to make me popular, I can do it by myself! I’ll prove to everyone that I’m better than you! Better at studying, better at combat, better at–”

Boboiboy put the phone on speaker and laid it down on the table for everyone to hear Fang’s incessant whining. He couldn’t stop grinning – this was just top-tier comedy!

“He’s not a very supportive person, is he?” Yaya said quietly, shaking her head.

“Most knights are very solitary,” whispered Ying. “But he’s on another level entirely!”

Gopal was grinning just as much as Boboiboy was. “That’s because he’s evil…”

Fang had apparently finally finished his whiny monologue as there was finally a bit of peace from the other end. Boboiboy leaned towards the phone and spoke again.

“Hey Fang, we’re all hanging out at the café, do you want to join us?”

There were a few more seconds of silence. “…Are there any red carrot donuts today?”

“Yep!”

A nearby window up on the third floor slammed open and Fang leapt out, sliding down the drainpipe at top speed and then running over as soon as he hit the floor. “ONE RED CARROT DONUT PLEASE, TOK ABA!”

Hah, how stupidly predictable. This boy could easily be controlled with just the promise of some red carrot donuts. Maybe it was worth giving bribery a shot, in that case…

Boboiboy waited until Fang had returned with an armful of donuts. “Fang, if you be my friend I promise I’ll convince my granddad to give you unlimited red carrot donuts for free.”

Fang just scoffed. “I’d rather pay the money.”

“Seriously?!”

“Stop being all nicey-nicey, okay? You’re not going to be able to make me care so don’t even try!” With that, he took his donuts and marched off.

Was that a challenge? Boboiboy was determined – he was going to _make_ Fang care. And he would use whatever means necessary. That knight was going to be _his_ knight, dammit!

He got up off his seat and went after him.

-

Where had that dumb knight got to? Why did Fang have to walk so fast? Well maybe because he was taller, so he had longer strides, and Boboiboy didn’t dare run considering that he was half convinced that Yaya had x-ray vision and would give him detention for a thousand years if he even tried it.

He managed to catch sight of him in the middle of the main corridor. “Aha! FANG! There you are! Come back!”

Fang turned around. “What do you want?! Stop following me!”

“I just want to chat! I…”

He stopped, aware that there was a strange creaking sound above him. What was that? Turning to look upwards, he saw nothing but the usual chandelier hanging there. Then what was that sound…?

“Boboiboy, look out!”

The next thing he knew, Fang had grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. Not a second too late, as the chandelier crashed down onto the ground in the spot where he had been standing just a moment ago.

Wow…

That had been… _way_ too close to hitting him.

There, in the midst of the carnage, stood Adu Du and Probe – now glaring daggers at him.

“Don’t tell me you survived AGAIN! What is wrong with you?!”

Boboiboy just shrugged. “Fang saved me, so…”

Adu Du hit Probe over the head. “You! You unscrewed the chandelier too noisily, everyone could hear you! Oh, for fffffff–”

“No Mister Boss!” Probe cried. “You mustn’t swear! This is a G-rated fic!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Noooo! You mustn’t say ‘hell’! It’s a bad word!”

“But you just said it now too.”

Probe covered his mouth with his hands. “Oh no! Well… it’s only a little bit of a bad word I guess, so maybe as long as I only use it infrequently it’s okay… there’s already been a ‘dammit’ too, and a strongly implied middle finger, so…”

What were they on about? Boboiboy just ignored them and turned around to see–

Okay, wow. Fang was kneeling on the floor, mourning the remains of his donuts.

“My poor donuts… I didn’t even get to eat you, all because I had to save that stupid boy…”

Boboiboy went over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. 5-second rule. They’re fine to eat.”

Fang slapped his hand away and stood up. “It’s been way longer than 5 seconds, you dork!”

“Well I’ll buy you some more, okay? As a present to say thanks for saving me.” He gave him a thumbs up. “You’re so awesome, Fang. That was the coolest.”

“Don’t mention it,” he mumbled in reply.

Seeing the lightest hints of a blush on Fang’s face suddenly reminded him – _and attractive_. Oh… oh yes. Fang thought he was attractive. And now he was blushing at compliments.

Hah, it would be so easy to knock him down a notch.

Boboiboy grinned at him and gave him a wink. “You’re my knight, right?”

“Yeah?”

“What if you were like one of Ye Knightes of Olde? Giving me flowers and handkerchiefs and stuff?”

That worked – Fang’s face had gone a much deeper shade of red. “Wh-what? I’m not giving you flowers! And… and it was the nobles who gave the knights handkerchiefs, not the other way round!”

Boboiboy held his hand out, grinning even more. “Hey, what if you bowed down and kissed my hand?”

“What are we, _medieval?!_ I… I’m not going to… ugh, I have to go!”

Boboiboy watched him leave with a feeling of great satisfaction. Served Fang right! If he was going to be so rude and annoying to someone who was just trying to make friends with him then he _should_ be mocked. Right?

And if it eventually did lead to Fang actually being nicer and becoming his trusted knight and friend for real, then that was the biggest bonus of all.

“I changed my mind about the donuts.”

Oh… Fang was back, and was now picking up bits of donut off the floor.

Boboiboy just slowly backed away. That was _disgusting._

-

“Ochobot, can you scan Fang and tell me if he’s a vampire?” Gopal asked that night, lying on his bed with his head hanging off upside-down.

“I can tell you without needing to scan him that he’s an alien.” Ochobot did not sound impressed.

“Well yes he’s an alien, but he might be a vampire alien! Can’t you just scan him and tell me?”

“No! I only use my scanners for important things, like testing Boboiboy’s food.”

“Hey Ochobot?” Boboiboy asked, the dumb donut-eating knight still on his mind. “Did you by any chance come installed with gaydar?”

“I don’t need gaydar, it’s already obvious how gay you are.”

He blushed, sinking into his pillow. It surely wasn’t _that_ obvious, was it? Anyway, he already knew that. It was Fang he wanted to know about!

“Fang is _definitely_ a vampire,” Gopal insisted. “I literally have so much proof! First of all, has anyone ever seen him eat garlic? No, that’s because all vampires are allergic. Secondly, have you ever heard him specifically deny being a vampire? Nope, that’s because it would be a lie. Thirdly…”

Ochobot just plugged himself into his charger and closed his eyes.

“Oh fine! Never mind, I’ll just write it all down instead.” Gopal grabbed a piece of paper and began scribbling furiously.

“If only you put this much effort into your homework,” Boboiboy muttered.

“Hey, that’s a great idea actually! I’ll write an essay about Fang being a vampire and then hand it in to teacher Papa. I’ll get full marks, and Yaya will stop giving me detention! Thanks, Boboiboy!”

“I…”

He didn’t even know what to say. Gopal was just so weird sometimes. No, no… _all_ the time. Gopal was weird all the time.

It was really starting to grow on him, though. Who knew how much more boring life would be without his odd friend’s entertaining commentary to liven things up?

The sweet twangs of a guitar floated through the window. What was that? Was someone playing the guitar outside? It was already late at night, this wasn’t exactly the right time for it if they were looking for an audience.

Boboiboy walked over to the balcony and leaned on the railing, looking out into the darkness for the source of the music.

Was that… Fang???

Over the next few seconds his eyes grew more accustomed to the dark. Sure enough, he could see that Fang was sitting on the stone wall below his balcony, softly strumming a guitar, quietly singing something under his breath. The night air was still enough that each note was clearly audible.

Huh… it sounded like a courting song.

Boboiboy was not sure how long he stood there listening, only that by the time Fang finally finished whatever he was practising, the moon had risen, leaving them both well-illuminated in its light.

Fang did not seem to have noticed him at all, still remaining seated apparently in deep thought. Boboiboy grinned before leaning over the railing and calling directly to him.

“Was that a serenade, Fang?”

Fang leapt to his feet, face bright red. “W-what are you doing here?!”

“This is my chamber! What are YOU doing here, huh? You trying to court me?”

“N-no I’m not!” Fang spluttered, his face even redder. “I’m not – I wasn’t trying to – I… I didn’t realize you were listening!”

“You’re a really good singer, Fang,” Boboiboy said. “Better than me.”

“Hah, obviously…”

He couldn’t get this smug grin off his face, seeing Fang so flustered. “Are you sure you weren’t trying to court me?”

“No!”

“So you’re not sure?”

Fang clenched his fist. “Ugh, get lost!”

“No way, this is my room! _You_ get lost!”

“Fine!” Grabbing his guitar, Fang retreated away into the darkness.

Seriously, why had he been out here of all places, playing that blatant courting song? There really weren’t that many explanations. Boboiboy smiled to himself, absent-mindedly tapping the tune on the railing. He couldn’t get it out of his head. Fang truly was a good singer…

And at this point he was pretty sure. There was absolutely _no way_ that boy was straight.


	7. R.I.P. (Rekt In Pieces)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the wise words of @findmeinthevoid: "oh to be an independent prince and arrive at a new school three weeks late to Immense Popularity and instant friendship and be courted by an attractive tsundere alien with ambiguous vampire status,,,,"
> 
> Warning, there is Mild Stabbing in this chapter. Just like everything else in this cursed fic, it isn't taken even remote seriously.

“That’s enough tutoring for today,” Ying said, closing her book. “After all, you don’t want to be late for your meeting with Papa Zola!”

“I hope I’m not in trouble,” Boboiboy said, sinking down in his seat and leaning his head on the desk. Why did the head teacher want to see him anyway?

“Oh come on, he probably just wants your autograph or something. Everyone does.”

“Except for Fang, and Adu Du and Probe, and probably some other Malevolents…”

“Nah, most of the Malevolents love you too at this point,” Gopal piped up. “Mostly because they hate Adu Du for making them lose the tournament so badly.”

Boboiboy chuckled. The tournament had been quite a while ago now, were the Malevolents still upset about it?

There was a sudden war cry from behind him.

“GIVE ME THE WEAPON NOW, PROBE! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

He spun around to catch a brief glimpse of Adu Du lunging at him, before feeling a sharp prick in his upper arm. Stumbling backwards, he looked down to see–

Something was stuck in his arm. Something sharp.

“Did you just stab me?” he said.

Adu Du stared for several seconds. “P-probe… what weapon did you just give me?!”

Probe sidled into view, half hidden behind his hands. “A compass, Mister Boss!”

Boboiboy yanked the thing out of his arm – sure enough, it was a simple compass, the kind used to draw circles in their maths classes.

“A compass?” Adu Du slowly turned around, absolutely livid. “A COMPASS?!”

“I’m sorry Mister Boss! The real weapons are reserved for the knights and the chefs wouldn’t let me take any knives from the kitchen! This was the sharpest thing I could find!”

“You useless robot! What was I supposed to do with this, scratch him?! Poke him???! Now we’ll have to resort to Plan B!”

Boboiboy stepped forwards to say something, only to be pushed aside by Ying, who rushed over to Adu Du carrying a rather heavy book in her hands.

“How dare you stab my friend?! Take this, you evil alien!” She started slamming him over the head repeatedly with the book.

“Ow – ow! Get off me! Probe, get me out of here!”

“Not so fast! This is what you get for attacking my friend!”

“PROOOOOBE! HEEEEELP…”

The sight of Adu Du being beaten up by a bookworm was a delight that Boboiboy hadn’t even realized he needed. As he watched Adu Du finally manage to get away with the help of his trusty sidekick, he grinned and gave Ying a thumbs up. “That was so rad…”

She turned back round, out of breath. “Heh… thanks…”

“You’d make a really good Honourable Combat student, actually! Imagine if you were a knight!”

“Hah, you’d make a way better knight than Boboiboy’s _actual_ knight!” Gopal laughed.

Fang, from halfway across the room, put down his book to glare at the three of them. “You know I’m right here, right? I can literally hear you.”

“Gopal’s right,” Ying said, crossing her arms. “Poor Boboiboy just got stabbed, and what did you do? You just sat there! I’m the one who went and beat up Adu Du!”

Fang sighed and got up, walking over to them. “Being stabbed with a compass is not going to kill Boboiboy, he wasn’t in any actual danger. And I’m not psychic, you know. I can’t magically stop Adu Du stabbing him if I don’t know it’s going to happen.”

“Couldn’t you have at least stabbed Adu Du back?” Boboiboy huffed, rubbing his poor arm. “It really hurt…”

“Ying was already going berserk, what was the point of me doing anything?”

“What’s the point of you at all, huh?”

“I’ve saved your life before, that’s the point! May I remind you that you almost got crushed by a chandelier last week?”

“Oh yeah…”

Fang rolled his eyes. “Come here, let me see your arm…”

Boboiboy went over and rolled his sleeve up. Fang pulled a tiny bottle and a bud of cotton wool out of one of his longcoat pockets and began putting some of the liquid on the cotton.

“Are you seriously treating it like an actual stab wound?” Ying said, unimpressed. “Like, do you just carry that first aid stuff around in your pockets all the time waiting for Boboiboy to get stabbed just so you can use it?”

“My job is to keep Boboiboy alive. That involves making sure he doesn’t get gangrene. So yeah, I’m cleaning out his stab wound – now can you all shut up and let me concentrate please?”

Boboiboy watched as Fang carefully wiped away the trickle of blood with the cotton wool – it stung a bit, but the adrenaline of _having just been stabbed_ was still keeping him from feeling it too much. And plus, it had just been a compass. At least he hadn’t been stabbed with something worse.

Gopal slid up beside them, a notepad and pen in hand. “Heeeeeey Fang?”

“What do you want?” Fang snapped.

“Just had a few questions, that’s all… for research… for science… So uh, you’re an alien, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re also a vampire, aren’t you? How do you feel about human blood? Or do you only drink alien blood? Like this blood right here that you’re cleaning up, is that the right kind of blood or does it have to be a different kind? Which is better, arteries or veins?”

“What the heck is wrong with you?!”

“Oh sorry, capillaries! Capillaries are better, right? Silly me…”

Fang proceeded to ignore him. He put a little plaster over Boboiboy’s stab wound. “There, all done. Now you won’t get gangrene and die, and I won’t be out of a job.”

Boboiboy smiled at him. “Thank you Fang…”

“Whatever, it was just first aid.”

“Yeah, I was the one who did the _important_ part, which was beating up Adu Du,” said Ying. “And speaking of Adu Du, what did he mean by ‘Plan B’? What’s he going to try now?”

Boboiboy shrugged. “No idea. I’ll think about it later – if I don’t leave now, I’ll be late for my meeting.”

“Need me to escort you through the corridors in case you get stabbed again?” Fang asked, a smug grin on his face.

“Sheesh, no I don’t! I can go by myself!”

He turned around and walked off. Adu Du had already just stabbed him and got beaten up for it, so he probably wasn’t going to try anything again too soon. Right?

-

“Come in, Boboiboy!” Papa Zola said, bowing and gesturing him into the office.

“Thank you sir…”

“Hi Boboiboy!” Yaya said, standing in the corner with a clipboard.

“Yaya? What are you doing here?”

“I’m in training to become the new head teacher when Papa Zola retires to be with his daughter! So I will be helping conduct this meeting.”

Boboiboy looked between the two of them, suspicious now that Yaya was here. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”

“No, of course not!” Papa Zola said. “I simply wanted to assess how effective your safety methods are! How is Ochobot doing?”

Boboiboy scratched his head. “Uh… good, I guess?”

“Ochobot scans all of Boboiboy’s food to make sure it isn’t poisonous,” Yaya said, reading off notes from her clipboard. “He is also able to scan Boboiboy directly to make sure he is in good health at all times. And he helps keep Boboiboy’s homework safe from thieves.”

“Ah, excellent!” Papa Zola nodded at her. “Thank you, my sidekick-in-training of justice!”

“Sidekick?!”

“Next question! How is your knight doing?”

“He’s uh…” Boboiboy trailed off, not really sure how to possibly describe Fang.

“Fang has been successful at keeping Boboiboy safe from attacks so far,” Yaya said. “Adu Du has been more wary about attacking Boboiboy in general, knowing that there’s a knight keeping him safe. And Fang saved Boboiboy from being hit by a chandelier last week. He’s doing an excellent job so far.”

Papa Zola stroked his moustache. “Very good, very good. So Boboiboy, how else do you think we can help keep you safe in the future?”

Boboiboy did not even get in a word this time before Yaya interrupted.

“Speaking to the Malevolent leaders about enforcing stricter rules on their students would help, especially enacting new rules that prevent Malevolents from being allowed to harm Benevolents. So far Adu Du has been getting away with his activities because there has been no reprimand from his teachers. In fact, they encourage his behaviour!”

“Right, right, so we need stricter rules, hmm, yes. I can make stricter rules.”

“Stricter rules for them, not for us, teacher Papa!”

“Huh? Oh. Well why not stricter rules for both? Yes, that’s a good idea! Thank you Yaya. And thank you Boboiboy, that will be all.”

Boboiboy frowned. “But… but I didn’t even do anything…” He glared at Yaya – that keen bean hadn’t even let him answer for himself! But then again, she was probably a lot better at all this than he was. She really was going to make a great head teacher someday.

And a strict one… yes, a very strict one.

Yaya held the door open for him. “Don’t worry Boboiboy. I promise I will always do everything I can within the rules to keep you safe. You’re my friend.”

“Thanks.”

As he left the room, he couldn’t help thinking… did the rules really matter that much to her? Couldn’t she break them if it meant keeping him alive? Or at least bend them a little?

-

He was about halfway back to his chamber when something suddenly yanked him from behind and threw him into an empty classroom. No, wait – a storeroom? It looked like one of the places where the chemistry equipment was stored, with plenty of shelves full of weird and probably poisonous liquids lining the walls.

Getting to his feet, he saw the door slam shut just before he reached it. He pulled at the handle but it appeared to be jammed.

What was going on?!

“Mwahahahaha! We have you trapped now, Boboiboy!”

He rolled his eyes. Adu Du and Probe being annoying again, as usual. This was probably another one of their lame assassination attempts.

“Let me out of here!” he called, hammering on the door.

“Hah, why would we ever let you out?”

“Let me out or I’ll call my knight!” He took his phone out of his pocket and sent Fang a message. Hopefully that stupid emo wouldn’t take too long to get here – he wasn’t particularly keen on getting stabbed again, or whatever Adu Du had in store for him this time.

“I’m not scared of your knight!” Adu Du yelled through the door. “Anyway, you’ll be dead long before he gets here. Probe, release the radiation!”

Radiation? What, like nuclear radiation? That was such a strange idea, maybe being bonked on the head with a heavy book several times earlier had knocked Adu Du’s brain out of whack.

Probe’s apologetic voice was so quiet that Boboiboy had to press his ear up against the door to hear it. “Mister Boss, the school only has limited amounts of radioactive material on site… the amount I have would only kill him if he was exposed to it for fifty years!”

“WHAT? Fifty years?! I don’t have that kind of time! We move to Plan C!”

“Um… what was Plan C again?”

“The flamethrower, Probe! Go get the flamethrower!”

“Ah yes, of course!”

Boboiboy’s heart jumped right into his throat – they were going to use a _flamethrower_ on him??? Most of the time these assassination attempts hadn’t been very effective at scaring him, but he had to admit now that he was indeed scared. Being locked inside this room with all these flammable liquids… it couldn’t end well.

There were some odd crashing noises outside, followed by a loud thump. The next second the door had opened, and–

Fang! Ochobot! Gopal!

Boboiboy ran out of the storeroom. “I’m so glad to see you guys! Adu Du was going to use a flamethrower on me… uh, where did he go?”

“I yeeted him out of the window,” Fang said.

Boboiboy went over to the now-smashed window to see Adu Du and Probe lying on the grass outside, barely stirring.

Wow… Fang had done that for him? Forget the stabbing incident earlier – his knight really was there for him when it was important, he couldn’t ignore that.

He turned to Gopal. “And what are you doing here?”

Gopal had a notepad and pen again. “I was interrogating Fang for my essay!”

“Stalking,” Fang clarified. “He was stalking me.”

“And he dragged me along,” Ochobot added. “Wants me to scan Fang and print out his entire genome. Which I will not do, for the record.”

Oh, so Gopal was just being weird, as usual. Never mind then. Boboiboy turned back to Fang, his heart still thumping from the threat of flamethrower.

“Thank you for saving me again, Fang,” he said. This time he truly was a bit shaken – how many times was he going to narrowly avoid death? What if one time Adu Du managed to actually succeed? Maybe it was time to start taking that stupid little alien seriously for once…

Fang did not reply. He had his arms folded, standing there just watching Boboiboy.

Then, for just a split-second, Boboiboy caught the smallest of smirks on his face, before Fang bowed down and planted a kiss on the back of his hand. The next second he was gone.

Was… was that payback for the serenade thing?

Oh, that definitely had to be payback for the serenade thing.

Boboiboy could do nothing but just stand and stare. His knees were going weak, and he was pretty sure he must be blushing. That had just been… unnecessarily smooth.

And unfair… ugh, this was _so unfair._

Gopal was waving a hand in front of his face. “Uh, Boboiboy? Planet to Boboiboy, you there?”

He shook himself out of it and grabbed Gopal’s shoulders. “Gopal help me! Why is Fang suddenly cute???”

Gopal did not look impressed. “You’re only just now noticing?”

“No, it’s just… he… he’s… well he’s really annoying, that’s for sure, but…” He clutched his heart in pain.

“Sheesh, so overdramatic.”

“Hey, you’re the one who cries at maths tests!”

“That’s because maths tests are actually scary. You’re just crying because you fancy a cute boy.”

“I’m not c-crying,” Boboiboy said, sniffing and wiping tears out of his eyes.

“Hmph. Ridiculous teenage mood swings.”

“As if you don’t get them too!” He turned to Ochobot. “Ochobot help me… I feel weird, wh-what’s happened to me…”

Ochobot sighed and gave him a quick scan. “You’re in perfect health, aside from your stab wound. Nothing wrong.”

Boboiboy stared at the ground in despair. “No… don’t tell me I actually _like_ Fang…”

“That seems like the right explanation.”

Oh come on… out of all people, Fang? Really?? Him???

Sure, he was objectively gorgeous, and had the most amazing voice, and evidently was pretty darn smooth when he wanted to be…

“Maybe,” he mumbled. “Maybe a little bit.”

“You can do better than him,” Gopal scoffed.

“I know, I know. And I will. It’s not a big deal.”

“Says the guy who was literally crying about it just now.”

Boboiboy simply rolled his eyes and walked off without replying. How stupid of him to care about _Fang_ , honestly…

-

“Dad, can I ask something?”

Why was he doing this? He didn’t know why he was doing this. Maybe because he had nearly died just now, and his brain was still running on pure adrenaline juice from that. He had been stabbed today too, and… yeah, he was running out of excuses.

“Sure son!” His father smiled that usual, somewhat hollow smile. “What’s up?”

Boboiboy wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. “H… h-how do I flirt?”

Of course, he wasn’t asking because he _liked_ Fang, well yes, sure, he did like Fang, but the flirting was for “making Fang blush like an idiot” purposes and not for anything else, right? If Fang could be super smooth, then surely Boboiboy could too…

“I showed your mother a chicken and that seemed to work,” Amato suggested.

“That will definitely not work.”

“Oh, well just try something out and see for yourself! Trial and error. Some independence is an excellent way to learn.”

He sighed. “Oh come on, please help…”

“I am helping!”

“Ugh, never mind. I… I have to go.”

“Good timing, me too. See you!”

Boboiboy promptly ended the call. What had possessed him to ask his dad for love advice?! Of course it would be no use. His dad always seemed too busy to pay much attention to him or suggest an answer other than “figure it out yourself”.

Well… he didn’t have to figure out anything at all if he didn’t want to. He could just ignore this. After all, he had more pressing problems to deal with! Like the whole getting stabbed thing. And the flamethrower thing. Yes, Adu Du was the real problem! He needed to focus on that.

Boboiboy stood up and smacked himself in the head. It didn’t really help. As much as he tried to think about all of his terrifying near-death experiences, all he could think about was Fang!

Oh, this was not good, not good at all…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to my little brother for suggesting the "stabbing with a compass" method of assassination attempt.
> 
> Tomorrow's chapter will be... extremely fun. *grins evilly*


	8. Fellas is it gay to...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not a slowburn. It isn't even a speedrun. It's more like... a tyre fire.
> 
> Gen fic is highkey my speciality so I shoved about 95% of the shippiness of this fic into this one chapter alone and the next several will be more friendshippy in tone, because who am I if not a friendship-stanning coward? Anyway, BOIFANG AHOY! Enjoy :D

Saturdays were usually nice. No lessons to go to, no having to wake up early, just being able to laze around and forget about homework before panicking on Sunday night and doing it all then.

But Boboiboy was not having a particularly relaxing Saturday. If he left his room, Adu Du would probably be waiting around some corner with a flamethrower, which meant he’d either die a horrible death or have to get Fang to protect him, and he wasn’t sure how he would cope with seeing Fang swoop in and save him again. What if it was really cool? What if he turned into some kind of swooning idiot?

But then again, he was missing out on opportunities to mock his dear knight, being holed up in his room like this…

No, his brain was too unpredictable around Fang. There was no telling what would happen. Yes, _maybe_ he would be fine, and nothing would be different from usual. But if Fang decided to be unnecessarily smooth again, then what…?

His phone rang. He picked it up. “Hello?”

“H-HEWWO?” boomed Gopal’s voice through the speaker. “HEWWO BOBOIBOY?”

“I should just hang up right now–”

“No don’t! I was kidding! I’m actually calling up because you’re in danger right now!”

“What are you talking about?”

Gopal’s voice sounded genuinely frantic. “Adu Du’s moved onto Plan D, and the D must stand for Doozy because WOW! This evil killing machine is indeed a doozy!”

“Killing machine?!” Boboiboy leapt to his feet. “What machine? Where is it?”

“He calls it the tracker-bot! You hear that whirring sound?”

There was indeed a faint whirring sound coming from the other end of the phone. “Yeah…”

“That’s the tracker-bot! It’s this weird machine with slidey wheels and a million arms all with knives taped to them! I guess they must have stolen the knives from the kitchen after all, huh…”

“Where is this machine?” Boboiboy asked. “Am I safe in my room?”

“Hah, not a chance. Adu Du is showing off at everyone that he stole some of your DNA from the blood from your stab wound the other day, and he used it to programme the tracker-bot to hunt you down. It’s on its way to your room right now and it’s gonna stab you properly this time.”

“What am I going to do?!”

“Don’t worry, Fang’s already on his way! You’ll be fine with him around! Aren’t I such a good wingman?”

“Fang??? Wait, no–”

“Good luck Boboiboy, please don’t die! I have to run away now but I’ll see you later if we both live – aaahhhHHHHHH BYEEEEEE!”

Gopal had already hung up before Boboiboy could even process what was happening. Adu Du had programmed a robot to kill him? Yeah, that seemed like the kind of thing he would do, though it was more energy-intensive than the usual dumb method, so evidently he was getting desperate…

The door slammed open and Fang strode in at top speed. “Boboiboy, did Gopal tell you what’s going on?”

Boboiboy nodded.

“Good. Look at this.”

Fang held up his phone, showing a quick video of the tracker-bot that he must have taken. It was exactly as Gopal had described it – a robot sliding around on wheels, with too many knife-wielding arms to count.

And yeah… it looked terrifying. Could anyone even survive an encounter with such a robot? If not, then there would be more casualties today than just Boboiboy.

He noticed with alarm that he could hear a distant whirring noise. That was the tracker-bot, wasn’t it?

“We have to leave,” Fang said. “You’re not safe in here.”

“Where will we go?”

“I don’t know, somewhere where the tracker-bot isn’t.”

He walked out of the door and Boboiboy followed him. The whirring was getting louder, so evidently whatever DNA programming Adu Du had done on it, it was working.

A thought struck Boboiboy. Adu Du was… not the brightest, right? He’d already underestimated Boboiboy before, thinking that a fall of only five steps would kill him. Not to mention stabbing him with a literal compass.

Maybe… maybe this robot wasn’t as bad as it seemed?

“Are you sure I can’t just try to destroy the tracker-bot myself?” Boboiboy asked.

“You seriously have a death wish, don’t you?!” Fang grabbed his arm and pulled him down the corridor without waiting. “I already alerted the other knights, they’ll get rid of it.”

“But I’m a Benevolent student! I should be doing this myself!!”

“None of you Benevolents know any combat, you’re basically _useless_ …”

“Hey!” Boboiboy wrenched his arm out of Fang’s grasp. “What did you just call me?!”

Fang took a step back. “I… I didn’t mean it like that!”

“You think I’m useless just because all you Neutrals get to learn combat and I don’t?”

Fang shook his head. “Look, we don’t have time for this! Come on, we have to find somewhere to hide!”

Sure enough, the whirring of the tracker-bot was getting closer and closer. Boboiboy let Fang take his arm again and followed behind him through the maze of corridors.

Huh… wouldn’t it be nice to learn some combat? He considered asking Fang, but now probably wasn’t the best moment. Plus, Fang probably wouldn’t say yes – he was too moody for that. Would he even make a good teacher? Surely not.

The tracker-bot was too fast, getting louder and louder. It would only be a matter of time before it caught up and put an end to their misery.

“Forget it, just get in here,” Fang said under his breath, opening the door to a broom closet. It looked dark and dusty and generally not very pleasant.

“Uh, are you sure–”

“Well unless you want to die you don’t really have any other option!” Fang shoved him in, then squeezed in himself and shut the door.

Outside the whirring grew nearer. The tracker-bot must have been approaching now. Boboiboy pressed his back against the wall and held his breath, barely daring to move. Please say it wouldn’t somehow hear him, please say it wouldn’t knock down the door and chomp him to pieces…

The whirring grew to almost deafening levels as the tracker-bot made its way down the corridor outside.

It passed the door directly.

And…

The noise, slowly, began to fade away as it carried on going.

Phew.

Thank goodness, it hadn’t discovered their hiding place after all. Now hopefully the knights would get to it soon, and then they could get out of here.

Boboiboy breathed a sigh of relief. “I think we’re safe–”

“Shhh!”

His breath caught in his throat. It had been too dark to see in here at first, but now his eyes were getting used to it. And the first thing he noticed was that it was even smaller than he’d thought. Fang was so close there was barely even half a step’s distance between them.

For several long, silent seconds, Boboiboy waited. It was still too dark to see anything more than an outline. He stared at the shadow where Fang’s face was, wondering what he was thinking – then quickly lowered his eyes to the floor. It was weird having someone standing so close.

After what seemed like forever, he dared to speak again. “Uh… you think the coast is clear now?”

“Mm.”

Again, hearing Fang’s voice from so close, it was… it was…

He glared down at the floor. It was nothing. He had to stop getting all flustered around Fang, it was starting to get ridiculous.

“Boboiboy… are you okay?”

His pulse shot up. He had never heard Fang speak to him so… softly? Why was he doing that?

“I’m fine,” he tried to say.

“Good…”

“Why are you suddenly being nice to me?”

He regretted it the instant he’d said it – surely now Fang would get mad at him, like always!

But Fang’s voice was still soft.

“Be quiet! Just… just l-let me care about you sometimes, okay? I’m your knight, I’m supposed to…”

He felt Fang’s hand on the side of his face. Finally his eyes had grown accustomed enough to the dark to see better, or perhaps it was just that Fang had moved closer – in any case, those blood-red eyes were watching him with a much kinder expression than usual.

Seriously… did Fang have to wait until they were alone in the dark before showing some vulnerability? Boboiboy didn’t have it in him to tease him about it right now, though, not when he was too busy internally kicking himself for rapidly turning into a flustered mess and not being able to do anything about it.

He had the serenade stuck in his head, the one that Fang had been playing beneath his window not too long ago. Even back then he had been at least casually daydreaming about what would have happened if the serenade had been real, if Fang had really meant it.

Right now, in such close vicinity to him, he was doing a lot more than daydreaming. He was _wishing._

Fang thought he was attractive, right? He’d let it slip that one time. And all his blushes certainly betrayed his inner unwanted feelings.

So maybe now he would… hopefully he would… actually acknowledge it…

Fang gently ran a thumb across his lip, still watching him carefully. Or maybe… checking him out? His eyes did keep dropping up and down, like he just didn’t know where to look…

Boboiboy wondered if he should say something. Or do something. Or make any kind of move at all.

He began to speak, only for Fang to shut him up by–

Well. Out of everything he’d expected Fang to do, _grabbing his face and kissing him_ was not high on the list.

But dang… it wasn’t unwelcome.

He didn’t even remember what he was going to say. As the shock slowly wore off, he closed his eyes and rather tentatively put his arms around this stupid, cute boy’s waist to pull him a little closer. Fang just leaned further into the kiss, running a hand through his hair too in a way that almost made him shiver.

He wasn’t even cold! What was going on? Was this why people liked kissing? It felt nicer than he’d thought it would – but maybe that was because Fang was… as much as he hated to admit it… _really kind of hot_ …

There was a beeping sound. Boboiboy opened his eyes. Fang took a quick step back and tapped on his phone, lighting up the screen. The sudden brightness lit up the whole room – wow, it really was tiny in here.

“Sai has destroyed the tracker-bot,” Fang said.

“Uh… huh.” Boboiboy nodded.

“So uh… we don’t have to stay in here any longer.”

Fang opened the door and stepped outside. Boboiboy followed, shielding his eyes from the sun streaming through the windows. He was still half dazed.

“You’re safe now, you can go back to your chamber,” Fang said, his voice suddenly much harsher, almost right back to its normal tone.

“Oh…” Boboiboy scratched the back of his neck. “Um… thank you for… uh…”

“Don’t mention it.”

“So… do you uh… want to come with me? Since… um…”

“What did I just say?” Fang glared at him. “Don’t mention it! Don’t mention anything! About what just happened!”

“But… but why not?”

“Just forget about it, okay?”

His heart was sinking. “Why?”

“It didn’t mean anything, jeez!” Fang strode right up to him and gave him a shove. “Don’t take it seriously! I was just… I was…”

“Messing around?” Boboiboy snapped, his temper rising. “You really think you can just… just…”

_…just pull me into a closet and kiss me and then act like it didn’t happen?_

“Yes, I can,” Fang said, before giving him one last shove and then turning and walking away.

Boboiboy dug his fingers into his hair in frustration. His lips were still tingling, but he suddenly wanted to kill Fang, but he also wanted to kiss him again, but he wanted to throw him out of the window, and – and –

Gah, it was so confusing! Couldn’t Fang just make sense for once?!

-

“Can I ask you something?” Boboiboy said, sitting down at the café.

Tok Aba put a mug of hot chocolate down in front of him and gave him a pat on the head. “Sure, anytime! What’s bothering you?”

Boboiboy took a deep breath. “Um… it’s kind of weird actually… I wanted some advice on something but… it’s sort of… awkward…”

“Like what? Like, puberty awkward? You need The Talk or something?”

“Yeeesh, no!” He recoiled, wincing. “Nothing like that! It’s just… I have a crush on this person, and…”

“Ah, who’s the lucky lady?”

Lucky lady? He sank down further into his seat, wishing the ground would swallow him up. “So uh, I’m gay.”

Tok Aba just paused for several moments before replying. “Hi gay, I’m Tok Aba.”

Boboiboy hid his face in his palms. “Why…”

“Hahahaha, I’m just kidding! So who is this lucky lad?”

“Just someone.”

“Well you should invite him here for a drink! I’ll give you a couples discount if you want.”

Boboiboy just looked down at his hot chocolate and sighed. “I think he hates me though.”

“Really?”

“And I sort of hate him too. He’s so rude and annoying!”

“It’s Fang,” Tok Aba said immediately.

“Wh-what? How did you know?!”

“I’m your grandfather, aren’t I? It’s my job to know these things!”

“Well anyway I can’t just bring him here,” he continued, unable to stop his bitterness consuming him. “If I asked him out he would say no. Or just ditch me halfway through the date and refuse to acknowledge it even happened.”

“You mean like what he did when he kissed you in the closet yesterday?” came a voice from behind.

Boboiboy spun round in shock. “Gopal! What are you doing here?! And – and keep quiet about that–”

Gopal sat down beside him. “Why should I? You yourself were mad that he didn’t want to talk about it. One hot chocolate please, Tok Aba.”

Boboiboy scowled – he was already starting to regret having told Gopal. But then again, coming back to his chamber yesterday, Gopal had been a great shoulder to cry out his heartbroken tears on…

“Is this true, Boboiboy?” Tok Aba asked.

He slowly nodded. “Yeah…”

“Aww, my grandson had his first kiss. I’m so proud.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” he muttered under his breath.

Another unwelcome voice drifted in from the side. “What’s all this? Is everything okay here?”

He turned to see Yaya walking over, notepad and pen out, doing her rounds as usual. Oh great, hopefully Gopal would keep his mouth shut and not say anything about–

“Boboiboy snogged Fang in a closet yesterday and now they’re both being emo about it!”

“What is wrong with you, Gopal?” Boboiboy hissed through gritted teeth.

“Hmm…” Yaya frowned and tapped the end of her pen on the notepad. “Technically kissing _is_ against the school rules…”

Come on, surely she wasn’t going to give him a detention for it? It hadn’t even been his fault! He hadn’t _asked_ Fang to kiss him, not out loud at least…

“…but if no one saw it, then I guess there’s no proof,” Yaya concluded. “As a gesture of queer solidarity I’ll let it slide. Just be careful next time. The jurisdiction of the Academy covers the planet up to an altitude of 30km, so it’s better if you take Fang out to space than in a terrestrial closet.”

Boboiboy rolled his eyes. “Thanks, noted.”

“So you mean kissing isn’t allowed anywhere on the planet?” Gopal asked.

“The rule only applies to students during term time,” Yaya replied, grinning. “So I guess you could wait for the holidays too. Isn’t that a better idea anyway? Just wait for school to be over, so you don’t have any homework or exams to worry about, and then go kiss Fang!”

“Okay!”

“Not you Gopal, I was talking to Boboiboy! He’s the one who’s been kissing Fang!”

“Boboiboy has been WHAT?!” Ying said, zooming over at top speed to join the conversation. Boboiboy sank even further into his seat – at this rate the whole school would know soon.

“He kissed Fang yesterday,” Yaya explained, “but that’s against the school rules so we’re trying to find loopholes for him.”

“Ooh, lucky!” Ying gave him a poke in the arm. “Is Fang your boyfriend?”

“Pfffff, no,” he scoffed. “He hates me.”

“Really? Then why did you kiss him?”

“Hey, he was the one who kissed me! Ask him!”

“Was it good? He’s basically a vampire, right, so did he hang upside-down from the ceiling like a bat? I always thought upside-down kisses are so much cooler–”

“No, of course he didn’t!”

“Aw, what a shame. You should tell him to do that next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” he said, sighing, giving his hot chocolate a half-hearted stir.

“Why not?”

“I told you, because he hates me!”

Yaya tapped the end of her pen on her chin in thought. “But clearly he must like you, at least secretly. Otherwise why would he kiss you?”

“Exactly!” Ying said. “And you like him too, right?”

Boboiboy just shrugged. He had very mixed feelings about Fang, that was for sure.

“Well you should make him like you so much that he’ll stop hating you! Give him flowers!”

“Hold his hand!” Yaya suggested.

“Admit to him that you like him!”

“Tell him a joke!”

“Ask him to be your boboiboyfriend!”

“Sheesh, I’m not doing any of that!” he snapped. “He doesn’t even like me, it wouldn’t work. He probably just kissed me because he was bored…”

Deep down he knew it wasn’t true – of course Fang liked him, it was pretty obvious. But maybe it was too painful to let himself hope he even had a chance.

Gopal put an arm around his shoulder. “Yo, listen. I have the absolute best gaydar, okay? And I can tell that Fang is head-over-heels for you. He’s what the kids these days call a ‘bicon’. All you have to do is kiss him again, but be _really good at it._ Then he’ll have to admit he likes you.”

“Huh? How do I do that?”

“Upside-down kiss!” Ying screeched, practically pummelling him in the arm.

“Stand on tiptoes and cuddle him!” Yaya said.

“Stroke his hair.”

“Take his visor off first so it doesn’t get in the way.”

“Ooh true! Do it really seductively, and then kiss him super slowly, he’ll melt.”

“And then because he likes vampires you should kiss his neck–”

“Can we stop talking about kissing?!” Boboiboy said hastily, aware his face was turning red. If they kept going like this, he’d end up so lovestruck that he would have to go find Fang and push him into the nearest wall – either to make out with him or kill him by snapping his neck, he wasn’t sure. Probably the first one though.

He simply planted his face into the table, ignoring his friends continuing to chat around him. Stupid brain. Stupid heart.

Hey – why had they all gone quiet suddenly?

He lifted his head and opened his eyes to see–

“One red carrot donut please, Tok Aba.”

Oh come on, not him, not _now_ …

“Hi Fang!” Gopal said in a suspicious, overly cheery voice. “How are you? Feeling good? Anything interesting happen lately? And by lately I mean yesterday at approximately 4 in the afternoon?”

Fang shot a glare at Boboiboy before turning back to Gopal. “Nothing.”

“Oh… uh… well what are you doing here? Have you come to say hi to anyone in particular?”

“Nope. Just wanted a donut. Bye.”

He turned to leave, only for Ying and Yaya to pull him back.

“Hey, have you forgotten you’re supposed to be protecting Boboiboy from threats?!”

“What’s wrong with you? You have to stay here and make sure he doesn’t die!”

“Stop abandoning him!”

“Here, I even made you a drink!” Tok Aba said, quickly dunking an extra straw into Boboiboy’s hot chocolate. “See look, you can share it with your prince–”

Fang slammed his hand on the counter. “I’m not sharing anything with him! What’s with you guys? I can protect him from over there in the corner, can’t I? Leave me alone!”

With that, he stormed off and stood at the edge of the courtyard, angrily munching on his donut.

“He has bags under his eyes,” Yaya pointed out quietly. “Has he been losing sleep?”

“Hah, it’s obvious isn’t it?” said Gopal. “He’s been too busy daydreaming about Boboiboy!”

“Don’t be silly!”

“Come on, I’m right and you know it! He was too busy smooching his pillow and pretending it was the closet yesterday afternoon – ow! Stop hitting me!”

“Take this seriously, Gopal! They both seem heartbroken and it’s our duty to help fix it!”

“Weren’t you the one telling him it’s against the rules for him to kiss Fang on this planet?”

Yaya paused to think. “True… I need to double-check that rule, actually. There must be some kind of loophole. I’ll be back soon, don’t kiss anyone until then.” She walked off towards Papa Zola’s office.

“So,” Gopal said, raising his eyebrows and elbowing Boboiboy in the ribs, “what if you made Fang jealous by flirting with some other guy right in front of him? Eh? Eh??? – Ying, stop hitting me!”

“You are so insensitive!” Ying snapped.

“I’m trying to help!”

Boboiboy just grabbed his mug of hot chocolate and stood up to leave. “None of you are any help. I’m going back to my chamber and lying down for a thousand years.”

“Now look what you’ve done, Gopal!” Ying said, hitting him again.

Boboiboy ignored them and walked towards the school building. As he passed Fang, for a second he slowed down, wondering if it was worth it to stop and speak to him. But what to say? And in any case, Fang was determinedly not looking at him. Never mind.

-

Back in his chamber, he flopped down on the bed and sighed.

“Huh? What’s wrong?” Ochobot zoomed over.

“Everything.”

“Did Adu Du try to kill you again?”

Hah, Adu Du couldn’t have been further from his mind. He sat up and hugged his knees to his chest. “It’s not that… It’s about Fang…”

“Oh yes, uh about that, I have a confession to make. When you were crying yesterday and telling Gopal everything that happened, I wasn’t actually asleep.”

“What? You heard all that?!”

“Yeah.”

Boboiboy just glared at the floor. “Oh Ochobot… what am I going to do?”

Ochobot gently patted his head. “I have no idea.”

“Neither do I…”

He lay back down and rolled over, pressing his face into the pillow and vaguely wondering if it would be able to absorb all his tears.

Ochobot seemed to be leaving him be, so what now? He couldn’t distract his brain from the most absurd daydreams – yeeting Fang off the tallest tower in the school, sending him into a black hole, pushing him off a cliff… listening to his serenades under the full moon… bringing him back to his room and kissing him until the sun went down…

He sat up, sweating. Okay nope – nope nope nope. Slippery slope right there. If he started daydreaming too much then it would get worse, and he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about Fang, and he’d be _in love_ , and it would completely suck.

Desperate for a distraction, he grabbed his phone and tried video calling his father back home. Was this a bad idea? Probably. But hey – maybe telling his dad might actually get the guy to _care_ for once.

“Hi son!” His father’s familiar empty face grinned at him on the screen. “What’s up?”

Best to start off with a bang. “I kissed a boy yesterday.”

Amato paused for a second. “Son, that’s gay.”

“Well yeah. Obviously.”

“Ohh… are you…?”

“Yep.”

“Huh, good for you. Anyway, this’ll teach you independence – planning weddings and all that–”

“What?! Dad, I’m 15!”

“Practically a grown man!”

“No I’m not!” Boboiboy was already regretting saying anything at all. “How do you jump straight from ‘first kiss’ to ‘weddings’? I… I don’t even know what I’m doing. At all. And at least everyone else is _trying_ to help.”

“Oh that’s good, then you won’t need mine! Continue being independent, alright? I’ll talk to you later, I have to go. See you!”

Boboiboy blinked back tears – the word “independent” was really starting to get on his nerves. His dad just didn’t care, did he? Not one bit.

There was a knock on his door. As much as he felt like just moping around and ignoring it, he forced himself to get up and answer. Oh thank goodness – it was just Yaya.

“I have confirmation from teacher Papa!” she said, pointing at her notepad. “The rules specifically state that kissing _between male and female students_ is not allowed. So it isn’t actually against the rules if you kiss Fang, and I don’t need to give you detention for it.”

He tried to smile. “Oh… good…”

“However…” A frown appeared on her face. “I also spoke with Fang earlier, and he informs me that when you were trying to get away from the tracker-bot, you ran in the corridors. Which I’m sure you know is not allowed.”

“What? But I was doing it to save my own life!”

“So what? It’s no excuse to break school rules!”

He just stared for several seconds, unable to believe how absurdly unfair this was. “Well… well… Fang was running too!”

“He’s a student of Neutrality so he abides by a different ruleset, and one that I have no authorization over. Anyway, don’t blame him for your wrongdoings! Detention, Boboiboy! Go to the kitchens this evening and don’t be late!” With that, she flipped her notepad shut and walked off.

Boboiboy clenched his fists. Did Fang really have to snitch on him and get him into trouble like that? Right after breaking his heart?! That wasn’t even Neutral, that was practically Malevolent!

Ugh, forget about trying to get with him. The only thing to be done was to get _over_ him.


	9. Skate or die

Boboiboy was on his way to another tutor session after lessons the next day when he noticed the knights who were guarding the library – they seemed to have been on an alternating schedule over the past several weeks, and now it was those two again. The ones who had been there the very first time. The “Shield siblings”, as people called them. The twins who won the archery and jousting at the interhouse tournament ages ago.

Fang’s roommates…

They stopped him when he got to the door, holding their spears out to prevent him from passing.

“So you’re the reason Fang doesn’t sleep at night,” one of them said, looking down at Boboiboy rather condescendingly. He had what looked like an overturned wok on his head. “Good to properly meet you at last, Boboiboy. I’m Sai.”

“And I’m Shielda,” his sister added, equally as condescending.

Boboiboy looked up at them. “Huh? Why doesn’t Fang sleep at night?”

Shielda laughed. “You really haven’t realized?”

“Uh… is he a vampire?” To think that maybe Gopal and Ying had been right after all…

“Hah, no. He’s just completely in love with you.”

Boboiboy was sure his face was going red. “I know… I mean… he thinks I’m attractive, I know that…” Ugh, it was so awkward talking about things like this, especially to these big serious knights he had never spoken to before. “…But why does that mean he doesn’t sleep at night?”

Sai exchanged a grin with his sister. “When he thinks we’re asleep he starts practising his serenades, making out with his pillow, being a dork. I read his diary too.”

“It’s really entertaining,” Shielda said. _“Oh today that pesky Boboiboy almost died again and I had to save him! Oh it was so romantic, he’s so gorgeous and wonderful, I hate him so much I want to stab him with a cactus and wipe that stupid grin off his mouth with my own mouth…”_

Boboiboy stared at the ground, not even daring to look up. “No way…”

“Yes way. You should talk to him about it.”

There was absolutely zero chance of him doing that. “Um… is that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Pretty much. You Benevolents are too goody-goody to talk about anything else with.”

“Hey, I’m not – !”

“Good luck Boboiboy, hope you don’t die.”

They gave him a brief nod before lifting their spears out of the way and allowing him passage through the door again.

Oh wow… was he really keeping Fang up at night? It didn’t mean that Fang still wasn’t an annoying selfish jerk, of course, but…

He wrapped his arms around himself, thoughts of the closet overwhelming him. What he would give to relive that…

“Are you going to go in the library or just stand here?” Shielda asked, giving him a poke with the blunt end of the spear.

“Oh, right…”

Boboiboy opened the door and went in. How embarrassing, honestly, that these fully-fledged University knights only knew him as that popular boy that their roommate had a thing for! How many other people were going to start seeing him like that too?! He didn’t usually care about his own popularity, but if this was the reason for it now, then he would rather not have it!

Gopal and Ying were already sitting in their usual spot in the library. Fang was nowhere to be seen for once.

“…so since Fang’s an alien, does that make Boboiboy a furry?”

“Gopal I’ll kill you in real life.”

“Why are you avoiding the question, huh? Is it because I’m right?”

“Shut up! Here he comes!”

Boboiboy walked over and slumped down into his seat. “I heard that.”

Ying jabbed Gopal in the arm rather hard before turning to Boboiboy with a huge smile. “No studying today. We’re having a break.”

“Huh? Why?”

“You’ve been having such a rough time lately! Adu Du keeps trying to kill you, your knight’s been a real jerk with your feelings, you had a detention yesterday… Look at you. You’re sad.”

Boboiboy nodded. Yes, he was sad.

“All these near-death experiences must be traumatic, and that’s on top of having your heart put through a shredder. You need a freaking break.”

“Thank you Ying,” he said, genuinely smiling. He very much did want a break.

Ying took hold of his arm and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go to the café and get some hot chocolate, okay?”

Gopal leapt to his feet too. “Did you say hot chocolate?!”

“Yeah. We’ll all get some hot chocolate. The tracker-bot even scared _me_ , to be honest…”

They turned towards the door, only to see that Iwan was tiptoeing up to them, holding a little note in his hand.

“Ooh, what’s this?” Ying asked. “Is this for us?”

Iwan nodded and threw it at her. Then he quickly turned around and left as silently as he’d arrived.

As Ying unfolded the note, Boboiboy couldn’t help but get his hopes up – was that a letter of apology from his dear knight? Or perhaps even… a love letter?

“Ugh, it’s from Adu Du,” Ying said, scowling.

Oh. Never mind then.

She passed the note to him. “Have a look at this.”

_Dear Boboiboy,_

_It makes sense that an honourable Benevolent student such as yourself would prefer a more honourable way of dealing with our feud than simple violence. So I hereby formally propose that we settle our debate with a battle of sharp wits, of eloquence, of impromptu poetry. The winner will be instated as heir to your planet. The loser can either be disgraced or executed, your choice. You may choose a volunteer to partake in this contest on your behalf, should you feel inadequate enough to do it yourself._

_Meet me at the café as soon as you have made your decision, and we shall begin._

_Yours Malevolently,_

_Adu Du_

“What do all those posh words even mean?” Gopal asked, leaning over Boboiboy’s shoulder to read.

Ying had a grin on her face. “Impromptu poetry, huh? Boboiboy, please let me take part in this contest on your behalf!”

“Sure,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t know anything about poetry anyway.”

“Just give me a few minutes to prepare. I’ll meet you at the café soon, okay? You go there and go tell Adu Du I’m coming for him!”

“And I’ll go get balloons!” Gopal said.

“Wha… balloons???”

“Well I brought a load of balloons with me to school, I may as well use them for something! So why not for celebrating a poetry challenge? It’ll provide hype and support!”

“Fine. I’ll see you guys in a few minutes!” Ying gave Boboiboy a pat on the head before rushing off. Gopal quickly left the room too.

Boboiboy began making his way to the café. This wasn’t some kind of trick, was it? Who knew, maybe Adu Du was waiting there with a flamethrower after all. He did not trust that alien one bit.

As conflicted as he was about Fang in general, he got out his phone and sent him a quick message. Things were… definitely weird between them, that was for sure. They hadn’t even talked since the closet. But Fang was his knight, and still had a duty to protect him from threats, no matter what was going on between them. If Adu Du was planning something suspicious, it was better if Fang was there.

-

There was already a crowd gathered at the café. Ochobot was helping Tok Aba serve drinks and snacks, even having a little apron tied around him.

“Aha, there you are Boboiboy!” Adu Du said, pointing at him menacingly. “Ready for your eventual execution?”

“You said it was my choice whether the loser gets executed or not,” he retorted.

“True! But either way, that loser will be you. Probe! Did you get the poetry judge?”

“Yes Mister Boss!” Probe said, gesturing at Papa Zola, who was standing beside him. “Papa Zola will be the judge!”

“What? But he’s a Benevolent! He’ll be partial to Boboiboy!”

Papa Zola looked affronted. “Hey, justice is always impartial! Whoever recites the better poetry will win, and I don’t care which house they’re in.”

“Hmm, fine…”

At that moment Ying and Gopal ran into the courtyard, followed by Fang at a distance walking in far slower. Gopal was trailing a bundle of balloons after him and did not hesitate for a second before heading towards the crowd and handing them out to the spectators one by one.

“I will be participating in your contest on behalf of Boboiboy!” Ying said. She ran up to stand beside him.

“Very well!” Adu Du said. “Are you ready?”

“Yep. You can go first.”

“Sure?”

“Sure. Square up.”

“Alright!”

Boboiboy looked around the audience. Gopal and Yaya were sitting on the table nearby, grinning at him and Ying with several balloons in their hands. Tok Aba and Ochobot had stopped their work to watch too.

Fang… was just sitting in the corner being the usual amount of emo.

Adu Du cleared his throat and began reciting.

_“Boboiboy, thou art a fool  
I, on the other hand, am very cool  
Your time is very nearly up  
You won’t survive to win the house cup.  
By year’s end, you’ll be in your grave  
You won’t be around for your knight to save  
You’ll die a very painful death  
And I can’t wait to see your last breath!”_

There was a polite applause from the crowd. Probe, holding one of Gopal’s balloons too, was cheering. “Yes Mister Boss!! What a wonderful start!”

Ying scoffed and took a pair of sunglasses out of her pocket, putting them on.

“What are the sunglasses for?” Boboiboy asked.

She lowered the sunglasses for a second to wink at him. “It’s a rap battle, isn’t it?”

“A rap battle?” Adu Du snapped. “This is a poetry recital!”

“Are you telling me that rapping _isn’t_ reciting poetry?”

“I… Fine! Just do it.”

Ying cracked her knuckles and took a step forward before beginning.

_“Adu Du you know you’re a laughing stock?  
We flock to drink the choc and mock  
You have no shame, you’re all the same, all you Malevolents are SUPER LAME!  
Boboiboy ain’t dead, and you’ve been trying for how long? How did you go so wrong?  
Now a poetry contest, what’s next, a dance and song? A game of mah-jong? Ping pong? You’ll never win, wake up, ding-dong!”_

She finished with a flourish, high-fiving Boboiboy. There was a tremendous applause from the crowd. Not to be outdone, Adu Du cracked his knuckles too and continued reciting.

_“Your words may have talent and speed  
But trust me, that is not what you need  
Just give up, your precious Boboiboy will die!  
Then I’ll be mocking you when you cry!”_

Adu Du’s applause was slightly louder this time. Ying did not care – she gave one of her pigtails a flick and carried on.

_“Nice try!  
You’re fresh outta luck, all you do is run amok, you’re a sitting duck, you suck, you absolute f–”_

“Nooooo!” Probe cried. “No swearing allowed! Points will be deducted for bad language!”

_“…absolute pile of muck.  
You want Boboiboy dead? Pah, you literally have a square head!  
I’m seeing red, you’re filled with dread  
You so badly wanna be king? Well if you stab my friend YOU GET THE YING.”_

The crowd was going wild, half of them in tears for some reason. Adu Du took several steps forward, his fists clenched.

_“I am not afraid of you  
Whatever you do, I can do too  
You wanna rap? Okay fine let’s GO  
Now why so slow? You’re a level below, your rhymes totally blow, you have no mojo, you’re worse than Ejo Jo, you Benevolent so-and-so!”_

Wait… Adu Du was rapping now too? The crowd seemed to be impressed, cheering as loud for Adu Du now as they had for Ying. Boboiboy briefly wondered who Ejo Jo was, but then again, maybe Adu Du had just made up a name to make the rhyme work.

Papa Zola tapped his watch. “Time’s nearly up!”

Ying put a pair of sunglasses over the top of her sunglasses and leaned her elbow on Boboiboy’s shoulder, too cool for words.

_“You’re a sad loser with no friends, I’ll protect Boboiboy until the end, you’re sending me around the bend, what’s with this stupid murder trend?  
Unlike you I actually have fun  
In the sun we laugh and run, and you just cry yourself to sleep  
‘Oh Boboiboy’s not dead yet!’ Hah, you’re a creep!  
One day we’ll end you, we’ll make you pay for your sins  
OKAY WE’RE DONE HERE –  
PAPA ZOLA, WHO WINS?”_

The crowd leapt to their feet and gave both the rappers a standing ovation. Boboiboy was impressed too – he had no idea that either of them knew how to rap.

“Alright, alright, quieten down!” Papa Zola boomed through his megaphone. “The great head teacher Papa Zola has come to a decision!”

Everyone waited with held breath. Hopefully Ying had won – Boboiboy did not want to just give away his planet to an annoying murderer. Even if that murderer was a surprisingly good rapper.

“Both teams did excellent,” Papa Zola continued. “Adu Du’s contribution flowed more poetically, very occasionally veering into iambic pentameter. On the other hand, Ying’s was more culturally applicable and was recited with more freedom and flexibility. Therefore it is a draw.”

“A WHAT?!” Adu Du screeched.

“A draw. That means that neither team wins, because–”

“I know what it means!” He spun around to face Boboiboy. “You! Give me your planet now!”

Ying pulled her sunglasses off and threw them to the ground. “Hey, you didn’t win! Of course you can’t have his planet.”

“But I didn’t lose either!”

“Well neither did we!”

“So you mean no one’s getting executed? Gahhhh, never mind! I shall go back to trying to kill you normally! Come on Probe, let’s go, this was a waste of time…”

Probe zoomed over to him. “Aww, I think you were a very good rapper Mister Boss…”

“Shut up! And get rid of that stupid balloon!”

Adu Du grabbed it and squeezed it so hard it–

BANG!

Boboiboy jumped out of his skin in shock.

Oh god – oh… okay… it was just the balloon popping…

Phew, that had practically given him a heart attack. He took a deep breath, clinging onto Ying’s arm to steady himself. He hated the sound of balloons popping. He always had. They were just so loud and unexpected...

Adu Du was watching him, a rather odd sort of frown on his face. Then he simply said, “Interesting. Very interesting.”

“What’s interesting?” Boboiboy asked.

“…Nothing. Come on Probe.”

Boboiboy watched them leave in confusion. What was all that about? What were they up to now?

Now that the rap battle was over the crowd was beginning to disperse. Boboiboy turned back to Ying, his spirits lifting.

“Thank you so much for doing the rap battle for me! That was so awesome.”

She glomped him in a hug. “Anytime! We’re all here to protect you no matter what.”

He was surprised to find himself tearing up a little. Back home, it had always been all _independent, independent, independent_. But here? He actually had people helping him. Taking care of him. People who he could rely on to be there when he needed it.

It was so nice, and to think he hadn’t even known what he was missing!

“Shall we go get some hot chocolate now?” Ying asked.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

They went over to the counter, where Tok Aba and Ochobot had resumed their work. Boboiboy noticed a donut on the table – he was in a charitable mood, and trying to be nice was in his nature. He took the donut and went over to the corner where his knight was sitting.

“Uh… Fang?”

It was strangely nerve-wracking talking to him now. This kid was a jerk and he knew it, but something within him was reminding him that he had made up his mind to become friends with Fang, no matter what it took.

Fang glanced at him. “Yeah?”

Boboiboy split the donut in half and handed one side to him. “I know you’re annoyed whenever I get attention and popularity. But it doesn’t mean we can’t be civil to each other. Right?”

Fang hesitated for a few seconds.

“Come on! I’m not saying we have to be best friends, or that you have to acknowledge the… the thing from the other day, but…”

Fang finally took the donut, his expression softening slightly. “Alright, fine. Thank you, Boboiboy.”

Phew, Boboiboy felt better already. It was nice to hear Fang being at least a little bit polite for once. What he wanted to hear most of all was an apology, but he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to get one – and that thought was not a pleasant one.

But at least if he was on good terms with his knight, that was a start.


	10. ADA DA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... yeah. This chapter maybe is a Little Sad. I didn't mean to take anything in this fic seriously but like. Boboiboy's life is seriously hecked up, man. So warning for a Small Amount Of Sad? And Stress... definitely Stress...

“Hey Boboiboy!” Gopal rushed into the room waving a little black book in his hand. “Look! Fang’s diary!”

“Huh?” Boboiboy leapt up off the bed. “You stole it?!”

“My detention was Neutral chambers cleaning duty and it was just lying on the table, therefore it was making the room messy, therefore I had to confiscate it. I’m just following the rules, of course.”

“Hmm…”

Gopal opened it up and started flicking through. “Ooh, he has nice handwriting…”

“Gopal, you can’t just read his diary! You should return it!”

“Oh come on, this is Fang we’re talking about! Didn’t he break your heart that one time? You deserve some revenge. And anyway, what could a boring guy like him have to write about?”

The conversation with those twins – Shieldy and Swordy or whatever their names were, he couldn’t remember – was ringing in his head. Oh god, surely they couldn’t have been telling the truth.

“Fang’s not boring,” he said, deciding not to think about the heartbreak for now. “He probably writes about his knight training. And about… uh… homework.”

Gopal just glared at him. “You are so stupid sometimes.”

“Well you’re the one who stole his diary without permission! I’m not reading it!”

“Hmph, suit yourself.” Gopal carried on rifling through the pages.

Boboiboy sighed and went to sit down. Sure, it was tempting to read Fang’s diary, and the revenge would certainly be sweet, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. An invasion of privacy. Even if Fang was a stupid jerk who thought it was a fun idea to break his heart…

“He writes about you a lot,” Gopal muttered.

“Oh?” Boboiboy tried to will himself to stop blushing. “Like what? What does he say about me?”

“Seems to just be him going on and on about how much he hates you.”

His heart sank. “Oh. Right.”

“And how much he wants to run you through with his sword and push you off the roof.”

“That’s very pleasant, thank you.”

“And how annoying it is that you’re so hot and cute and perfect. Pfffff, tsundere weirdo.”

Tsundere weirdo… yeah, that sounded right…

“Ooh, look at this! I found the day when he snogged you in that closet!”

Abandoning all common sense and reason, Boboiboy rushed over to Gopal. “Really? What did he say?!”

Gopal held the book out at him. “Well why don’t you read it yourself?”

He hesitated, his conscience telling him not to.

“Oh come on! It’s just one entry! He would totally read your diary if you had one, wouldn’t he? This is just pre-emptive payback!”

Well… just one entry would be alright, wouldn’t it? He grabbed the diary, his hands shaking, and started to read.

_Dear diary,_

_I kissed him today. How could I not? If only you had seen the look he was giving me in that closet… I’ve never seen anyone swoon so hard. It’s been all I can think about. I thought maybe if I did it, my brain would finally stop going crazy whenever he’s near. But now it’s even worse. I want to do it again…_

_He’s so infuriating! If he ever comes that close again, I won’t hesitate to wipe the smile off his face by – by – ugh, how can I even write it, the things I would do to that boy? I want to say I’d slap him, but the truth is I’d want to press him up against the wall and kiss his stupid face so hard he goes numb, can’t speak, can’t think, can’t breathe… there, I wrote it! Kill me now. End my suffering. I hate him so much, I’m going to die._

Followed by a long string of swear words…

“Isn’t he just so emo?” Gopal was saying, shaking his head. _“Kill me now, end my suffering…_ Please, give me a break Mr Emo Depressed Teenager. It’s just a crush, no need to be dramatic.”

Boboiboy wordlessly handed the diary back. Maybe it was best not to read more for now, not when just this much was giving him such butterflies that he already couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. If Fang really did that to him he’d probably just combust into flames on the spot.

But still… there was nothing in the diary entry that said _why_ Fang had decided to break his heart, pretend it never happened. Sure, he “hated him so much he was going to die”, but… why? Was he really just that much of a tsundere?

“I should photocopy all of this,” Gopal said. It was enough to snap Boboiboy back into coherent speech.

“What? No, don’t do that! What’s wrong with you?”

“Why not? That way I can read back through this in my own leisure time!”

Boboiboy snatched the diary off him. “I’m going and giving this back right now!”

“Not yet, I haven’t finished reading it!”

“Too bad!” He left Gopal there and walked out of the room.

-

Right… where was Fang’s room again? Somewhere in the Neutral sector, that much he knew. He had only been there on the odd occasion. In any case, it was already pretty late, and it would be past curfew soon. He’d better just give this back quickly and head back to his own chamber right away.

Oh man, what was he going to tell Fang? Should he admit that he read some of it? Fang would never forgive him, and they had barely just started being on good terms towards each other…

The lights in the corridors were dimmed in preparation for bedtime. What area of the school was this? Boboiboy was starting to think he might be lost.

There was a sign on a door up ahead labelled “FANG’S ROOM”. Oh – was that it then? He hadn’t remembered that sign being there last time, huh…

He went and knocked on the door. There was no answer.

Well in that case, best to just go and sneak this in quietly while Fang was gone, and he wouldn’t have to know it had been stolen in the first place. Perfect!

He opened the door and crept in. It was dark in here…

“TIE HIM UP NOW, PROBE!”

He had no time to react before something grabbed his arms and tied them behind his back. The next thing he knew, he was tied to a chair with Adu Du, Probe, and a blindingly bright light staring right at his face.

“What do you want?” he said, struggling to get free. “Let me go!”

“Or what?” Adu Du asked, grinning very smugly.

“Or I’ll call my… oh…” His phone was in his pocket, and his hands were tied up. There was no possible way for him to reach it.

“Go ahead, just try to call your precious knight!”

“Um… Siri, call Fang!... Alexa?... OK Google?...”

Adu Du just threw back his head and laughed at him.

“Mister Boss, should I get his phone out for him?” Probe asked.

Adu Du smacked him. “No, of course not! You stupid robot!”

Boboiboy wiggled his fingers around, trying to find the end of a rope, something, _anything_. “What do you want with me, huh?”

“Ahahaha. Muahahaha. BwAHAHAHAHA–”

“Will you stop laughing and just tell me how you’re going to kill me?!”

“Fine!” Adu Du adjusted the lamp so that it was shining even brighter, making Boboiboy wince. “I have concocted the most evil, Malevolent plan to cause your death. First of all, we needed to lure you into my room here, so Probe switched around all the signposts and furniture in the corridors so that you would become lost.”

Oh… that explained it. As forgetful as he could be sometimes, he was sure he wasn’t _that_ forgetful.

“And then I stuck a sign on the door saying that this room belongs to Fang, since it’s common knowledge that you have a soft spot for that knight.”

Boboiboy glared at the floor, his cheeks heating up. “I… I was just returning his diary, Gopal stole it, so…”

Adu Du had the diary in his hand and had a quick flick through it. “Hah, there’s nothing but emo rubbish in this! I don’t care about it at all. Here, have it back – you won’t be alive for very long anyway.”

He tossed the diary into Boboiboy’s lap.

“Mister Boss, should I get the balloons now?” Probe asked.

“Silence! I’m telling him the plan in order, stop giving him spoilers!”

Oh no… did they say balloons? There was a sinking feeling in his stomach. Nothing good could come of this.

“Earlier on, at the rap battle,” Adu Du continued, “I noticed your stressed reaction to witnessing the balloon popping. You’re scared of it! So why not use this? We stole Gopal’s entire stash of balloons, and now we have tied you here so that you are forced to watch as we pop all of them, one by one!”

“What? Why are you doing this to me?!”

“So that you’ll have a heart attack and die! That way it’ll look like an accident too!”

His heart was already beginning to beat faster. He couldn’t stand balloons popping, he really just couldn’t.

“Probe, get the balloons now!”

“Okay, Mister Boss!”

“And as for you, Boboiboy…” Adu Du put the tips of his fingers together. “Welcome to your final hours. By the time morning is here, you’ll have come to a miserable end!”

No, this couldn’t be happening. Surely this was a bad dream or something? Boboiboy struggled against the ropes, trying to somehow get free, but in vain. What a nightmare this was rapidly turning into.

Probe returned with several balloons. “Here you go, Mister Boss!”

“Ah, perfect.” Adu Du took out a compass from his pocket, then took one of the balloons from Probe. “Are you ready Boboiboy? The clock ticking down to your death begins now!”

He held the balloon up close to the sharp end of the compass. Then closer. Then closer. Then closer…

“No, don’t!” Boboiboy said, desperately trying to break the ropes.

“Aha, it’s working! He’s getting stressed!”

Adu Du moved the balloon closer to Boboiboy’s face, before suddenly–

BANG!

Boboiboy squeezed his eyes shut tight, tears already rolling out of them. Adu Du was right – he was definitely going to have a heart attack and die.

He carefully opened one eye, only to see that Adu Du had already kicked aside the remains of the popped balloon and grabbed another fresh one. Oh no, not another one, not again…

But Adu Du popped another. And another. And another.

Boboiboy could barely catch his breath, he was so terrified. It was relentless. Balloon after balloon after balloon. He was going crazy and all he could hope for was that the heart attack would just hurry up and end his misery already.

And Adu Du had the audacity to laugh at him! Not that he could properly hear over the rushing of blood in his ears. He was so afraid, so panicked, so much fear piled on top of stress and more fear, and no end in sight…

If only he could get his hands free and call his knight, punch Adu Du’s face, stab him with the compass, anything! But the ropes were tied too tight to come undone. Now there was an itch on his nose too, and he couldn’t get to it, and _oh god it hurt so bad, everything hurt–_

“Uh excuse me has anyone seen all my balloon– hey, what’s going on in here?”

Boboiboy dared to open his eyes. The lamp was still shining too bright for him to see properly, but the silhouette standing in the doorway looked familiar.

Was that…?

“Gopal?!” Adu Du yelled. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m going around looking for my balloons, someone stole them all,” said Gopal. “Oh yeah, and Boboiboy went off ages ago and never came back so I was kinda wondering if you killed him.”

“I’m alive!” Boboiboy gasped out, still barely able to breathe. “Get me out of here!”

Gopal stepped into the room. “Huh? What’s going on here? Are those balloons? Are they _my_ balloons?”

Adu Du laughed nervously. “Uh… we’re just having a birthday party for Boboiboy! Isn’t that right?”

“No they’re not, they’re torturing me!” Boboiboy sobbed. “They’re p-popping all the balloons in my face and I… I’m g-going to have a heart attack, Gopal, please save me…”

Gopal turned to face Adu Du with his hands on his hips. “Excuse me? First of all you torture my best friend? That’s so rude. But more importantly, YOU STOLE MY BALLOONS????”

“And what about it?” Adu Du said.

“What about it?! Those are my BALLOONS! How dare you steal them? I won’t let you get away with this, you shameless thief! You friend-torturer! You – you – I’m gonna kill you!”

Boboiboy watched in amazement as Gopal punched Adu Du and sent him flying across the room. As Probe went over to go check on his master, Gopal ran up and untied Boboiboy from the chair.

“Huh? Is this Fang’s diary? I thought you said you were going to go give it back–”

“Well I was a bit busy being traumatized!” Boboiboy snapped. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

“NOT SO FAST!”

Adu Du had got up off the floor and was brushing himself off.

“Just give us a break, won’t you?” Gopal said, shaking his head. “You seriously need to chill. The high blood pressure is going to kill you before it kills Boboiboy. And anyway, if you had him tied up like that, why were you just popping balloons at him? He was right at your mercy, you could have stabbed him or strangled him or beat him up or literally anything.”

Boboiboy rolled his eyes. How pleasant to hear his own best friend describing various scenarios of his painful death.

“That’s a great idea!” Adu Du said. “Probe, transform into Mega-Probe and kill these two pests!”

Probe immediately grew to the upgraded version of himself that they had last seen at the football match, towering over them. There was absolutely no chance of beating him.

Boboiboy glared at Gopal. “Gee, thanks a lot. Now we’re definitely going to die.”

The door opened yet again.

“Yo, Adu Du, can you please SHUT UP? Some of us are trying to sleep! Just kill that kid in the morning!”

They all turned towards the door to see that several Malevolent students were standing there in pyjamas, rubbing their eyes, looking murderous.

“But… but he’s right here!” Adu Du said. “I’ll kill him quickly, I promise!”

“No. Either you kill him tomorrow, or we kill you now. Do you know how long you’ve kept us all up with that stupid balloon-popping? Some of us have exams, Adu Du. EXAMS.”

Adu Du threw the compass on the floor. “UgghhhHHHH FINE! Just get out of here Boboiboy! Next time you won’t be so lucky!”

Boboiboy did not need to be told twice. Grabbing Fang’s diary with one hand and Gopal with the other, he made a hasty getaway.

-

They had almost made it back to their room when Yaya cornered them, striding angrily down the corridor with her pen and notepad in hand.

“What’s the meaning of this? It’s way past curfew! I’m here because I have to do my rounds, but what’s your excuse for being out of bed? You’re not supposed to leave your chambers until morning!”

“We were fighting Adu Du!” Gopal explained. “He stole my balloons and he kidnapped Boboiboy, so–”

“I don’t care! You shouldn’t be breaking school rules!”

Boboiboy had just about had enough – he burst into tears.

Yaya was looking mortified. “Are you okay?”

_“I’m not okay!”_ He buried his face in his hands. “I keep nearly d-dying and all you care about are RULES!”

Gopal put an arm around him. “He was being tortured, Yaya! He’s emotionally scarred! And personally, I think that saving my best friend’s life is more important than the rules.”

“Th-thank you Gopal…”

Yaya looked between them, frowning in concern. “I… I’m sorry. I really am. But I still have to give you detentions.”

“What is wrong with you?!”

“It’s not my choice! Adu Du is cruel, and you deserve so much better. I’ll… I’ll have a think about it.”

“Yeah, please do…”

“I’m conflicted, alright? I never break the rules. Never, ever, ever. But…” She gently placed a hand on Boboiboy’s shoulder. “My poor friend is suffering… I don’t know what to do! I already give Boboiboy nice detentions anyway, as a way to make him feel better!”

“Baking cookies with you is not a ‘nice detention’ I’ll have you know,” said Gopal. “Your cookies taste terrible.”

“What did you say about my cookies?!”

“They. Taste. Terrible!”

“That’s it! Double detention for you!”

Boboiboy did not wait to hear any more of their arguing. He pushed past them and went back to his room as fast as he could, not caring if Yaya saw him running in the corridors.

-

Ochobot popped up as soon as he was back. “Boboiboy! I was beginning to get worried…”

Boboiboy just kicked off his shoes and curled up on his bed. He still had Fang’s diary in his arms… oh, whatever. He could return it tomorrow.

Ochobot gave him a quick scan. “Did something happen? My scan is showing that you’re very unwell. Possibly a panic attack.”

Boboiboy grabbed Ochobot out of the air and pulled him into a hug. He was exhausted now – scared and miserable and tired. This day had been far, far too much. These past several weeks had been, actually.

He had almost died, so many times, too many to count now. He’d had his heart broken for the first time. He was realizing his whole life mode of “independence” up to this point was setting him back, and his father just didn’t care.

What was he going to do?


	11. Kill it with fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will probably be about 15 chapters in the whole thing, so we're nearly getting to the end now. I'll give this boy a break soon, I swear. In the meantime just have me blatantly brotp-ing him with literally everyone. (This includes Fang.)

Boboiboy knocked on the door to Fang’s room – Fang’s actual room this time. Oh man, this was going to be a disaster, Fang was going to hate him, probably stab him or something…

It was one of the Shield twins who opened the door. “Oh? Boboiboy, what are you doing here?”

She had a smug grin on her face, which Boboiboy chose to ignore. “I just wanted to talk to Fang…”

“Hah, of course you do. No worries, I’m leaving now anyway.”

“Thanks, uh…”

“Shielda.”

Ah yes, that was her name. He had been about to call her “Shieldy”, so thank goodness she’d said it before he started embarrassing himself in front of a fully-fledged knight again. His life was already embarrassing enough as it was.

She let him into the room and then quickly headed out, slamming the door behind her.

Fang had been sitting on his bed with his guitar, but as soon as he saw Boboiboy he put it aside and leapt to his feet. “Boboiboy? I was just… um… why are you here?”

Boboiboy held out the diary, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “Giving this back.”

“What? You stole it?!” Fang snatched it off him and cradled it in his arms in true emo fashion.

“No, it wasn’t me! Gopal took it when he was on cleaning duty! I’m just returning it, since he won’t.”

“Oh… okay…”

The guilt of throwing Gopal under the bus was eating him alive, and so was the guilt of having actually read some of the thing. Hopefully Fang wouldn’t ask about…

“Did you read any of it?”

Oh no, what was he meant to say now? He stared at the floor, wondering how to break the news in the gentlest way, but his silence was evidently enough to prove his guilt.

“You did, didn’t you? Ughhh…” Fang turned away and hid his blushing face behind the diary.

“Only a little bit! Gopal read more of it than me, I swear, I only read like one page…”

“Which page?!”

Yikes, this really was turning into a disaster. “The… the closet one?”

“The WHAT?!”

“I’m so sorry!” Boboiboy said hastily. “Really, I am! I shouldn’t have done it, I apologize, that was so rude of me, I promise I won’t tell anyone what you wrote, and anyway your roommates told me they read your diary too so–”

“Sai and Shielda read my diary?!”

Boboiboy smacked himself in the forehead – why had he let that slip? This was not going well at all.

Fang was hunched over in pain, muttering under his breath. “I need to die… tell Adu Du to stab me… make it painful… tell Kaizo he can get rekt…”

Kaizo? Who was Kaizo?

In any case, Boboiboy winced and put a hand on Fang’s shoulder. “Fang… are you mad at me?”

“Well of course I’m mad!” Fang snapped. “But…” He sighed. “…I guess I’m glad at least you told me. Which is better than I can say for my own roommates.”

Oh? Well, this was a little unexpected. Truthfully, Boboiboy had expected Fang to go into a complete rage.

“I feel really bad about reading it,” he admitted.

“Good, you should! But it’s not like you didn’t already know everything I wrote…”

Fang’s face was bright red and he was adamantly looking at the ground. It was kind of true, wasn’t it? Boboiboy had already known that Fang was into him. Well, and hated him for being more popular. The diary didn’t exactly tell him anything new. All it really did was make it clear how melodramatic this weird knight was at times.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. What else was there to say to make things better?

“You… you won’t tell anyone about this, will you?”

“Of course I won’t.”

Fang threw the diary at the bed and dropped his frown. “Okay good. Um… thanks for not mocking me about it. And for apologizing.”

It was clear that Fang was trying so, so hard to be civil, as upset as he was. This was such a pleasant surprise! Was there a chance he might go so far as to apologize for breaking Boboiboy’s heart that one time too…?

“Yeah, apologies are awesome,” Boboiboy said quickly. “And apologizing definitely makes you feel better, because apologies are wonderful and great and everyone should definitely apologize for things… and…”

_Come on, get the hint!_

But Fang just crossed his arms. “Anyway, don’t do it again.”

Eh, it had been worth a shot. “I won’t. And I’ll make sure Gopal doesn’t either.”

“Oh yeah, is it true Gopal saved you from Adu Du last night?”

Boboiboy did not want to think about last night at all. “Yep.”

“Why didn’t you call me?! I would have saved you!”

“I couldn’t call you, I was tied up! And I almost died!”

“What is Adu Du’s problem?” Fang said. “You can hate people without killing them.”

“I know, like you about me…”

“What? I’m not talking about you. I… don’t hate you, you know. I just mean – I hate Adu Du, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to kill him, does it?”

Boboiboy didn’t even bother trying to process the second part of what Fang had just said. “You don’t hate me? I thought you did!”

Fang rolled his eyes. “You’ve been nice to me lately.”

“Hey, I tried to be nice to you from the start!”

“Well… well your popularity has been dwindling now too! No one’s been throwing flower petals at you when you walk past anymore, so you’re way less annoying now.”

Ugh, this again? Boboiboy decided to change the subject. “Hey, do you want to go to the café?”

“Hm? Why?”

“To hang out, of course!”

Fang stared at him, confused.

“I always hang out with my friends there,” Boboiboy continued. “You’re usually busy standing in the corner eating donuts. But feel free to properly join us if you want.”

“But I like standing in the corner eating donuts!”

“Seriously? Yeesh, you’re so weird…”

Boboiboy turned to leave, only for Fang to gently grab his arm and stop him. “Wait! I… okay fine, I’ll come to the café with you…”

He was actually smiling – not even an annoying “I’m better than you” smirk, but an actual, real smile. Boboiboy got the feeling that Fang had never really had anyone to actually hang out with before. His own roommates seemed to not really like him all that much, and the rest of the time he was pretty much a loner.

Heh… he was cute when he smiled.

Boboiboy smiled back and walked off, with Fang following him. It would be nice to spend some more time with his knight, actually get to know him now – aside from him being a petty tsundere jerk, or things he probably shouldn’t know from their intimate moments in the closet.

And honestly, thank goodness he wasn’t too upset about the diary thing. That was a big weight off Boboiboy’s mind. The loose end of his knight hating him was finally being tied up at last.

Now, was there a way to tie up the loose end of Adu Du and Probe constantly trying to kill him?

-

For the next few days, there were no more assassination attempts. It might have been because Fang was actually spending a decent amount of time with Boboiboy and his friends, as opposed to sulking in his room playing the guitar and only responding to desperate phone calls.

But of course it was too good to last.

Yaya had postponed Boboiboy’s detention for a few days, waiting until he was in a better frame of mind for it. He was still annoyed that she hadn’t cancelled it altogether – what kind of person would give someone a detention for the crime of _almost being killed?_ And she called herself his friend!

He trudged down towards the kitchens, barely focusing on his surroundings. The thought of having to bake more of those horrible cookies was dropping his serotonin levels faster than the asteroid that had destroyed Papa Zola’s planet.

“Aha, Boboiboy! Halt right there!”

Boboiboy just sighed. “What now, Adu Du? Stealing more balloons?”

Adu Du was standing in front of him, chuckling evilly. “No, I have something much more… _Benevolent_ in mind.”

“Huh? Benevolent?”

“Yes. I would like to take a selfie with you. This way I have will have a memento of my dear enemy forever, even long after I’ve killed you. It will remind me of these days.”

Well, a simple selfie couldn’t hurt. Boboiboy took his phone out of his pocket.

“NOW, PROBE!”

Probe zoomed up from behind and snatched the phone out of his hand, knocking him to the floor in the process.

“Here you go, Mister Boss!”

“Ah, perfect!” Adu Du took the phone. “Now you won’t be able to call your knight!”

So he hadn’t wanted a selfie? Ugh, that was so rude!

Boboiboy began to get to his feet, only for Adu Du to suddenly pull out some kind of odd tank with a nozzle attached to the front of it.

No… surely that wasn’t a…

“Stay right there, or I attack you with my flamethrower!” Adu Du said, pointing the nozzle directly at him.

What now? He couldn’t call his knight without his phone. And at this rate, if he survived, he’d be late for his detention, and Yaya would not be happy about that.

Adu Du was still laughing heartily. “Ah yes, I will burn you to a crisp, Boboiboy!”

“Um, Mister Boss, isn’t that kind of dark?” Probe piped up.

“Of course it’s dark, I’m evil!”

“But this is a G-rated fic, it’s not allowed to be too dark!”

“What?! I’ve already tried to kill him so many times though! We psychologically tortured him last chapter! Isn’t that already too dark? And what about all the kissing?”

“It was only a little bit of kissing, Mister Boss, don’t make it weird! And Boboiboy hasn’t actually died or been badly injured yet…”

“Well I don’t care. Time to turn this from a G-rating to a T-rating!”

“Oh, are you going to kiss him?”

“No, you stupid robot, I ship him with Fang! I’m going to kill him with this flamethrower!”

“But if you ship him with Fang then why are you trying to kill him?”

“PROBE YOU USELESS–”

While they were busy arguing, Boboiboy quietly began creeping away. Evidently he wasn’t quiet enough, though.

“Where do you think you’re going?!” Adu Du yelled. “Stay there! I’m going to kill you now! I’ll just take a moment to savour the terror in your eyes first…”

What? Was this really it? After all this time, was Adu Du really going to succeed?

Boboiboy couldn’t help wishing he had been killed in one of the earlier attempts instead of right here, right now. Death by flamethrower seemed unfairly painful. In what universe could he possibly deserve _this_ as an end to his life?!

There were footsteps from up the corridor. Adu Du had a second to turn and look before he was smacked aside by someone, the flamethrower falling to the ground unused.

Boboiboy looked up to see–

_Yaya!_

Wait, was she…

… _running?????_

Surely he had to be dreaming. Yaya would never run in the corridors. This was just a hallucination caused by the stress of being at death’s door, obviously. Huh, maybe Adu Du had already started killing him, and his brain was blocking out the pain by imagining the most unlikely thing he could think of.

It wasn’t until Yaya reached him and yanked him up off the floor that it hit him – this was REAL.

Yaya was actually, really, genuinely running.

And now she was dragging him down the corridor after her, still going at top speed. It just didn’t make any sense. How was she doing this? Why? Was this an impostor or something?

She did not stop until she had reached his room where she finally let go of him and leaned over to catch her breath.

“Yaya? How… Why…” Boboiboy was still too stunned for words.

“Oh no, I just ran in the corridors…” She sank to her knees, her eyes widening. “I just broke the rules!”

“Yaya, that was awesome!”

“No it wasn’t! I broke the rules, Boboiboy!”

“I know, right? Why did you do that?”

“Because Adu Du was going to attack you!” She wiped tears out of her eyes with her sleeve. “I was wondering why you were late for your detention so I went looking for you. And I saw Adu Du with a flamethrower, and I knew if I walked then I wouldn’t have time to get to you before you got hurt. So I… just…”

As on-edge as he still was, he couldn’t help but let out an adrenaline-fuelled laugh. “You saved my life!”

“I can’t believe I did that… I really broke the rules… but I couldn’t let you die! I would never have forgiven myself!”

Boboiboy couldn’t stop grinning. Finally, she was admitting that his life was more important than the rules! It felt better than he could ever have imagined. Yaya, the epitome of lawful good, was finally understanding that the _good_ side was more important than the _lawful_.

She leapt up and hugged him. “I’m sorry for giving you a detention, Boboiboy! This is all my fault!”

“What? How is it your fault?”

“You were on your way to detention when Adu Du attacked you, weren’t you? Forget it. Cancel it. You don’t deserve a detention. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks, Yaya.”

“In fact,” she said, stepping away and getting out a notepad and pen, “I’m the one who deserves detention. I ran in the corridors, after all.”

“But you were doing it to save my life!”

“So what? I still broke the rules! I’m going to have to write my name down…”

Boboiboy just stared in disbelief. Why were all his friends such weirdos?

Anyway, another thing was now pressing on his mind. “Adu Du and Probe still have my phone! How am I supposed to call Fang if I need him?”

Yaya held his phone out at him. “I snatched it from Probe as I ran past. It’s wrong of him to take other people’s property.”

“Oh, thanks.” He gladly took it back. Selfie with Adu Du, honestly, he was never falling for that again…

“From now on I think you should be more careful,” Yaya said. “I may be a student representative, but there’s only so much I can do in terms of rules to stop Adu Du. Fang being your knight is already unprecedented. You have to start taking him with you wherever you go from now on.”

“What? But I don’t need him babysitting me!”

“It’s not babysitting, he’s younger than you! He’s there to _protect_ you, Boboiboy. And what if I hadn’t been there today? You would have died! You’re not going to get lucky every time! From now on whenever you’re not in your room or your classes, you have to be with Fang.”

Boboiboy ignored the funny pangs in his heart. “Fine.”

“Have you asked him out yet?”

“W-what? No, of course not!”

“Well get a move on and do it!”

“But I don’t want to!” He realized as he said it that it wasn’t completely true, but still, he wasn’t telling Yaya that. Too many mixed feelings to bother explaining.

“If you did, that would be a perfect excuse to have him by your side all the time. But it’s up to you.” She gave him a rather pointed look, then turned and began walking off. “Oh, this evening has been so stressful… I need to go find Ying, and… h-hug her… I’m never running in the corridors again…”

That had indeed been a stressful evening. Was that the closest to death that he had been so far? Hopefully he would never get any closer. Who even knew if he would get any sleep tonight, considering how terrifying that had been.

One thing was giving him peace, though. His student representative – his _friend_ – had saved his life. He no longer needed to worry if she didn’t care about him more than her own reputation, or her house role. Yaya was there for him after all.

And he didn’t even need to help her make cookies again.

Phew…


	12. I don't even have a witty chapter name for this one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone order some Boifang fluff? Well, platonic fluff. Well... sort of?

For the next few weeks, Adu Du seemed to be running light on the assassination attempts. The only thing that had been worrying was another few bouts of poisoned food, but Ochobot quickly caught that, and it wasn’t a problem to avoid.

What had happened? Why was Adu Du being so wary, especially after last time he had been so close to actually succeeding in his goal? For a while Boboiboy thought that perhaps Fang’s constant presence really was keeping him safe. But he got the true answer soon enough.

Walking back from class one day, he stopped as he came across a commotion in the corridor. Adu Du was stood in the corner, clenching his fists angrily, as several Malevolent students were crowding around and yelling at him.

“You’re so annoying, Adu Du! All you’ve done since you got here is get on our nerves!”

“Even that Boboiboy kid is better than you are!”

“We’ve made a pact to keep him alive, just to spite you. You suck, okay?”

“I failed my exams because of you!”

“We won’t let you take that guy’s planet from him! You don’t deserve a planet and you don’t deserve any hot chocolate!”

Adu Du frantically called into his phone. “Probe, I need backup!”

One of the Malevolents grabbed the phone and threw it on the ground, followed by another stomping it into pieces.

“Hey! What was that for?!”

“Did you even hear any of what we said?” a Malevolent snapped, grabbing Adu Du by the collar and picking him up.

“Get off me! You’ll regret this!”

The Malevolent slammed him against the wall. “Shut up! I’ve had enough of you!”

Standing beside Boboiboy, Fang had pulled out a donut and was happily munching on it. “Hahaha, this is great! Serves him right.”

Boboiboy frowned. Part of him was glad to see Adu Du getting what he deserved, especially after all those times he’d tried to kill him.

But part of him was…

…was _feeling sorry for him?_

Ugh, why was he too nice?! Knowing this would come back to bite him, he stepped forwards and gave the Malevolent student a poke on the arm.

“Uhhh… hi?”

The Malevolent turned to glare at him. “You? What do you want?”

Boboiboy gulped – he hadn’t really thought this through. “I, um, wanted to talk to Adu Du.”

“Why? Isn’t he always trying to kill you?”

“I want to talk to him so I can kill him back!” Pffff, what a stupid lie…

“Oh, okay.” The Malevolent dropped Adu Du onto the ground rather unceremoniously. “Go for it, but make sure that knight stays here to keep you safe. I don’t trust this twerp one little bit. Come on squad, let’s get out of here…”

The Malevolent gang walked away, glaring daggers at Adu Du as they went. The little green alien himself was getting up off the ground, coughing.

“Wh… why did you interfere?!”

Boboiboy put his hands on his hips. “How about a ‘thank you’, huh? I just saved you from getting beaten up!”

“I didn’t need your help!”

Fang walked over and put a hand on Boboiboy’s shoulder. “We should go now, he’s probably going to try and kill you again… stab you with a compass or something…”

“Hah, I’m not stupid enough to attack you with your knight around,” Adu Du said. “But why did you save me?”

Boboiboy shrugged. “I couldn’t just leave you there!”

“Well don’t think this means I won’t still try and kill you! I am Malevolent! Evil!”

“Do you want some hot chocolate?”

“I… what?”

“Hot chocolate,” Boboiboy repeated. “You’re always so angry… maybe some of my granddad’s hot chocolate will calm you down and make you feel better.”

“What are you doing?” Fang hissed in his ear. “He’s our enemy!”

“Yes, but everyone else is being so mean to him! Even in his own house!”

“Have you forgotten how many times he’s tried to murder you?!”

Boboiboy turned to look at his knight. “You used to be so mean to me. But I started being nice, and even though it took forever, you got nicer too. So why shouldn’t I at least try that with Adu Du too?”

Fang just stared at him in surprise.

Adu Du gave his broken phone a kick. “It’s… been a bad day. I would like some hot chocolate. But Tok Aba refuses to give me any.”

“I’ll sort it out,” Boboiboy said. “Come on, let’s go to the café.”

“Hmmmm, fine…”

It was clear that Adu Du was suspicious – he had got the compass out of his pocket again and was gripping it tight. Fang, too, had unsheathed his sword and was keeping a close eye out.

For now, at least, that seemed to be a good enough stalemate. It was unlikely that Adu Du would try to kill him right now. In that case, some hot chocolate was just what everyone needed.

-

“Absolutely not,” said Tok Aba.

“Oh, but come on!” Boboiboy put on his most adorable expression. “The other students were bullying him!”

“He’s been trying to kill you for months! Why should I give him any hot chocolate?”

“It’ll calm down his anger management issues!”

“Hm, alright. Only if he can say ‘please’.”

Boboiboy turned to look at Adu Du. “Go on then.”

Adu Du scoffed. “What? I’m not saying that.”

“But then you won’t get any hot chocolate!”

“Well then I’ll steal some! Or I’ll kill you, and get all the hot chocolate that way!”

Ugh, this was going to be tougher than he thought. “Come on Adu Du, please, just be polite for once in your life…”

“No! Never!”

Tok Aba sighed, shaking his head. “You crazy alien… Fine then. How about a game of checkers? If I win, you have to say please. If you win, you get a cup of hot chocolate for free.”

Oh, how typical. His granddad was always looking for excuses to show off his checkers prowess.

“Fine then, I accept your challenge!” said Adu Du, leaping onto the counter.

Tok Aba had already pulled out a checkers board and was ready to go. “Your move first!”

“Mwahahahaha! I will win, and then I will have FREE HOT CHOCOLATE! YOU STAND NO CHANCE AGAINST ME!”

“Oh yeah? Just you wait and see!”

They began moving their pieces back and forth.

-

The problem with checkers was that… it was kind of boring to watch. Boboiboy just leaned on the counter, barely keeping track of what was going on. He knew Tok Aba would win anyway. It was just a matter of time.

A _long_ time.

He yawned, looking at his watch. How much longer? Fang was already taking a nap sitting up somehow, and Boboiboy wished he could do that too. Why couldn’t they just have had another rap battle? That would have been way more entertaining. He didn’t even know how checkers worked.

“Hah, I win!”

He snapped out of his thoughts to see that Tok Aba was standing there triumphant, while Adu Du was staring at the board in shock. Oh good – the outcome he had expected.

“Now say ‘please’!”

Adu Du rolled his eyes. “Oh fine! P… p-pl… ggahhhHHHH…”

“You can do it!” Boboiboy said, giving him a thumbs up.

“PpppppppppppPPPPPPPLEASE! There you go! I said it!”

Tok Aba gave him a pat on the back. “Good work!”

“Now give me hot chocolate!”

“Heh, that wasn’t part of the deal. The deal was that if I won, you had to say ‘please’. Nothing about hot chocolate in there.”

“WHAT?!”

“Haha, I’m just kidding! Here you go.”

Tok Aba slid a mug across the counter. Adu Du grabbed it and began drinking immediately. He did not stop until he had chugged the entire thing down in one go.

“Feeling better?” Boboiboy asked.

“I…” Adu Du looked conflicted. “…I’m still going to try and kill you.”

“Yes, but now you feel at least a bit bad about it. Right?”

“N-no! No I don’t!”

“Yes you do.”

“I don’t!” Adu Du leapt off his seat and started running away. “I don’t feel bad at all! And I’m still going to kill you, just you wait!…”

Tok Aba tutted, shaking his head. “How ungrateful. He didn’t even thank me!”

“Are you sure that was a good idea?” asked Fang. “Now he’ll just want hot chocolate from here more often, right?”

“So he’ll start being polite more often,” Boboiboy said. “And then maybe he’ll slowly change, and he’ll stop trying to kill me all the time…”

“And then I’ll be out of a job.”

“What? No!”

“But I’m your knight, I’m meant to protect you from threats! If there’s no threat, what’s the point?”

Boboiboy’s heart was sinking faster than he had thought it possibly could – he couldn’t imagine school without Fang now. “Of course there’s a point! You… you’re my knight…”

But Fang was right. The only reason he had a knight in the first place was because of the assassination attempts. If Adu Du hadn’t been trying to kill him then nothing would have changed from the start. Fang would probably still hate him. They wouldn’t even have any reason to talk to each other.

The thought gave Boboiboy an unwelcome chill.

“It’s almost the holidays,” Tok Aba said, taking Adu Du’s used mug and giving it a clean. “A new warp drive will be in soon, so I guess I can go back home.”

More unwelcome thoughts? Boboiboy turned to Tok Aba with tears in his eyes. “No, don’t leave me!”

“You want me to stay here?”

He nodded. “Your hot chocolate is improving everyone’s exam results! And anyway… whenever I call my parents back home, they… well… you’re better at advice.”

Tok Aba gave Boboiboy a pat on the head. “Aw, alright then. I’ll stay here. I like it here anyway – I get way more customers.”

“Thank you granddad…”

“You’re welcome, Boboiboy. Hey – do you two want a drink? Here, you can share!”

He pushed a big cup of hot chocolate at them, putting two straws in it. Was he… was he trying to set them up again?! Or was this meant to be a symbol of friendship? Maybe it didn’t matter either way.

Boboiboy gave Fang a poke. “Want to share this?”

Fang, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes from his little nap during the checkers game, nodded. “Well why not…”

Huh… here he was, actually sharing a drink with Fang. If only he could go back in time and tell his past self!

-

It was almost evening by the time Fang dropped Boboiboy off to his chamber. Gopal was still at a maths tutoring session with Ying, so the room was empty.

“Have a good night,” Fang said, smiling sweetly at him.

Boboiboy found himself just not wanting Fang to leave – he hadn’t had enough of him. He grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the room. “Fang… uh…”

Now what? What excuse did he have to ask him to stay? He didn’t even know why he _wanted_ Fang to stay in the first place, well he kind of did know, but he also didn’t, and it was too confusing to think about right now…

“…can you teach me combat?”

He wasn’t really sure what he expected, but luckily Fang’s answer was not hostile. “Only Neutral students are allowed to use weapons though. Yaya would kill me.”

“Well what about hand-to-hand combat?”

Fang grinned. “What, like wrestling or something? I have no idea how to do that!”

“Ooh, really? So you mean I might be better at it than you?”

“Hey, no way! You’ve never trained in combat a single day in your life, of course I’m better! I’ve been training in combat since I was…”

There he went again, showing off, trying to insist he was better, more popular, whatever. How stupidly typical of him.

Boboiboy just laughed. “Prove it!”

Fang did not need to be told twice – evidently he had been waiting for an opportunity to legally fight Boboiboy. He ran over and pushed him, trying to knock him down. Boboiboy could not even resist with his full strength, he was more than a little distracted. Those biceps! He hadn’t really had an excuse to see them close-up before…

The “match” did not last long. Fang was victorious, having managed to push Boboiboy down onto the bed, and now clambered over and pinned him down.

“Hah! I told you I’m better! It doesn’t matter which kind of combat, I… s-stop laughing! What’s with you?!”

Boboiboy himself was not sure why he was giggling so much. Maybe it was just all the nervous energy, considering that this was the most physical contact he’d had with Fang since… well, since the closet.

“Huh, I didn’t realize you had freckles…”

Fang had noticed his freckles? No one ever noticed them! They were so small and faint, only someone who was really concentrating would see them.

“Hey, you’re really warm… are you okay? Got a fever?”

Fang was looking down at him in concern. It was so unfair, he was just unnecessarily cute, and especially from that close! Boboiboy tried very hard not to stare, and that just made him stare even more, and he didn’t even know where to look, and…

Fang raised an eyebrow. “…You’re checking me out, aren’t you.”

_Well yeah…_

“No,” Boboiboy lied.

Fang just watched him for several long, long seconds, before gently sliding down and wrapping his arms around him in a hug, squeezing him tight. “I don’t really care… I’m glad you’re my friend, Boboiboy.”

Boboiboy was too shocked to do anything.

Fang, hugging him? Fang, _calling him his friend?_

He hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear it, how much it warmed his heart. After all this time of trying, his knight really was his friend. Truly. At long last…

He hugged Fang close, so close. This was too nice. He could stay here forever, cuddling his knight, he really could…

Fang’s phone beeped. He lazily rolled aside and had a look at it. Then he sat up immediately, serious all of a sudden.

“What is it?” Boboiboy asked.

“Captain Kaizo,” Fang muttered, typing something into his phone.

“Who?”

“My brother…”

Boboiboy sat up too. “You have a brother? You never mentioned it before.”

Fang glanced at him. “Captain Kaizo is… not really very brotherly. He’s strict.”

“Why is he texting you?”

“The other week I asked him for help on how to protect you, since he used to be a knight here too some years ago, and you had only just survived being kidnapped by Adu Du. He got mad at me and told me to stop messaging him. But now he’s just sent me a message saying he’ll be arriving at the Academy shortly, I don’t even know why…”

“Ooh, can I meet him?” Any excuse to get in the good books of Fang’s family.

“I guess.” Fang got up off the bed and began walking off without waiting. He looked rather more defeated than usual – was his brother really that strict?

Boboiboy got to his feet and followed Fang. He was still a little too warm on the inside, still giddy and distracted by the thought that Fang really did consider him a friend now.

Was an apology on the way? Because until he got that, he didn’t even want to allow himself to think about making a move.

But that hug… that had been good. He certainly wouldn’t mind doing that again soon.


	13. hOW COULD YOU KASSIM-

Captain Kaizo’s spaceship was already parked outside the front doors of the Academy by the time Fang and Boboiboy got there. The guy himself was standing just in front of it, tapping his foot impatiently as he waited.

Boboiboy had not thought it was possible for anyone to look visibly more emo than Fang, but… wow. He could definitely see that Kaizo and Fang shared the same emo genes.

Well… and the same “aesthetically pleasing” genes…

He waited back while Fang went over to his brother and stopped a short distance away. “Captain.”

Kaizo glared down at him. “You haven’t grown at all.”

“It’s only been a few months!”

“Hmph.” Kaizo’s voice was so oddly cold – he had been a knight, so he must have been Neutral while he had been here, but he certainly sounded very Malevolent. “How are your studies? Are you a full knight yet?”

“No, I’m still in training.”

“Pathetic.”

“B-but I’m still only 15! You can only graduate to full knight status at 18!”

“Did I stutter? _Pa-the-tic.”_

Fang fell silent at that. Boboiboy clenched his fists – usually seeing Fang getting insulted was kind of funny, but this time it was like having compass needles stuck into him. Such harsh words, and from his own brother?

“Anyway, I’m not here for your studies,” Kaizo continued. “I’m here to bring you back to HQ. We need more troops and it sounds like this school isn’t teaching you much anyway.”

“Huh? I’m leaving?”

“Yes. Hurry up and get in the spaceship.”

Fang looked horrified. “But… I can’t leave! Not yet!”

“Aren’t your holidays starting today anyway?”

“Yes, but…” Fang glanced back to look at Boboiboy for a second. “…I have a mission here.”

Kaizo rolled his eyes. “Yes, protecting that prince, which you’re not even good at, considering you tried to ask _me_ for advice. He’s probably better off without you. Now come on.”

“No… I…”

“Are you disobeying me?” Kaizo’s hand went to the hilt of his sword.

“Captain, I… I can’t leave. The prince is in constant danger, and I have to protect him.”

“There are other knights here to protect him, you know.”

“But this is my job! I’m the one who won the Honourable Combat tournament so I have to do it!”

Kaizo pulled his sword out. “You insolent brat!”

Fang wavered for a few seconds but did not back down. “I’ve saved his life multiple times, Captain! He needs me!”

“He’s a _prince!_ He didn’t earn that title, he inherited it! What makes you care so much?”

“He’s not like other princes! He’s nice, and kind, and g-good, and he tries hard, and…”

Kaizo sighed, slowly putting his sword away. “You are so stubborn. I can see there’s no point trying to change your mind – stay then, if you must.”

Fang breathed a sigh of relief. Over in the corner, Boboiboy did too – he hadn’t realized how much the thought of Fang leaving him would hurt him.

“But can I at least meet this prince of yours? You can only stay if I approve of him. Go bring him to me now.”

“Yes Captain.”

All Fang had to do was turn around and give a nod. Boboiboy went over, trying not to tremble. This Captain Kaizo just gave him bad vibes somehow.

He put a smile on his face and waved. “Um, hi Captain!... I’m Boboiboy, nice to meet you…”

Kaizo’s expression did not change. “You’re the prince who Fang is protecting?”

“Yes.”

“Is he doing a good job?”

Boboiboy nodded eagerly. “I wouldn’t be alive without him! He’s a hero, he’s saved me lots of times. Please let him stay, he’s awesome…”

Captain Kaizo just looked down at him for several seconds, before turning his cold gaze back to his little brother. “Fang, I approve of your boyfriend.”

“My WHAT?!” Fang leapt backwards. “He’s – he’s n-not my…!”

Kaizo just smirked, before walking off with a swish off his cape.

Boboiboy watched in silence as Kaizo went back aboard his spaceship, not moving a muscle as it took off into the air and gradually disappeared from sight.

He had the blessing of Fang’s big brother… though did he want it? Or need it? It was still too confusing for him to think about.

There was an uneasy silence. Boboiboy turned to Fang and asked, “Did you tell him I’m your boyfriend?”

Fang shook his head. “I didn’t tell him anything like that, I swear. It’s just that he can read me like a book.”

“Um… what?”

“Oh come on!” Fang rolled his eyes. “He’s my brother! He may not care about this stuff himself but he can tell I’m crushing on you. I guess that’s why he thought you’re my boyfriend.”

Boboiboy just stared – it wasn’t a surprise that Fang had a crush on him, he obviously knew that, but the confession itself was certainly unexpected. He had thought Fang would never outright admit it anywhere aside from his diary. Hearing him say it so casually was making his knees go annoyingly weak…

Fang stepped closer to him, putting a hand on his cheek like he had done back in that closet, a long time ago. “Maybe… maybe he’s right… maybe I should… just…”

This was just like the closet, oh boy. As much as Boboiboy had tried to stop himself, since that day he had been dreaming about this happening again, about Fang finally getting over himself, leaning in close and–

But no.

He remembered what had happened afterwards last time. And he wasn’t going to let it happen again.

Their lips had barely met before he shoved Fang away. “Are you trying to mess with me again?!”

“What? No? I–”

“You’re just going to pretend this never happened, like you did last time!” To his alarm, his eyes were filling up with tears. “You just think it’s fun to – to play with my feelings! To break my heart! Isn’t that right?”

Fang seemed at a loss for words. “I… It’s not like that–”

Boboiboy gave him another shove. “Go to hell, Fang.”

With that, he ran off. These stupid tears in his eyes – why did he still like this boy?! He shouldn’t fall for it! Fang was just selfish, and annoying, and… and…

…and his friend, and…

_…and he’d looked so heartbroken just now…_

-

Boboiboy did not stop until he was in the loneliest, most remote corner of the kitchens, where no one would ever even think about looking for him. He hid himself in one of the storerooms and locked the door. He didn’t want to go back to his room, and he couldn’t very well go anywhere else or his stupid knight might show up, or Adu Du might kill him, though that last option was seeming almost a little tempting now…

He sat down and turned his phone to silent. It was better not to talk to anyone right now.

Was he being overdramatic? Probably. But Fang had spent several weeks being petty and overdramatic, so why shouldn’t anyone else get to have a go?

His friends were going to be worried if they didn’t hear from him. He didn’t care.

No… he did care. He cared too much.

Picking up his phone again, he couldn’t help but look at it. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but there were several messages from his friends. Specifically ignoring the ones from his knight, he checked all the others.

**_Yaya:_ ** _Apparently you’re in a bad mood? That’s fine, but please make sure you’re somewhere that Adu Du can’t get to you, and respond to this message just so that I can be sure you’re safe! And get back to your room before curfew!_

**_Ying:_ ** _I won’t go home for the holidays until I know you’re safe from Adu Du, okay? Just text me back and let me know!_

**_Gopal:_ ** _lmaooooo dude where r u fang is frickin REKT bahahahaha_

**_Tok Aba:_ ** _Ochobot is showing me how to send messages on the telephone. Would some hot chocolate make you feel better? I hope you are not dead. Regards, Tok Aba. Sent from my SpacePhone X, Get MessengerApp for SpaceDroid_

Well he wasn’t dead, and he didn’t want anyone thinking he was and getting unnecessarily stressed. He quickly replied to them.

_I’m fine, I’ll be back soon I promise! xxx_

Ugh, even in a bad mood he couldn’t bring himself to sound like it. Not even over text.

Well there was no way he was going back to his room right now – screw curfew. To brave the corridors again he needed Fang’s protection, and just thinking about that dumb knight was too painful. Was Fang really sorry? Was he taking it seriously this time? It wasn’t like he had apologized, so probably not…

Boboiboy hugged his knees to his chest. He hadn’t ruined their friendship, had he?

-

He awoke to see the little notification light on his phone flashing. How long had he been asleep here for? He couldn’t even remember falling asleep! It must have been several hours at least. All he could remember was eating some of the food in here and making a drink or two for himself – no hot chocolate in here, sadly.

Unlocking his phone, he saw that it was already early morning. Oh man, he had really spent all night here in the kitchen storeroom of all places? His muscles were all stiff from having fallen asleep on the hard floor.

Now to check this notification…

It was a video message from some unknown number. That was kind of dodgy. In any case he checked it to see–

_“Greetings, Boboiboy! I am Ejo Jo!”_

Some strange alien was talking to the screen. He looked kind of like Adu Du actually, with a similar square head and green skin, but somehow much more menacing than Adu Du could ever manage.

_“I have heard tell of the magnificent cocoa you possess on your planet, but the intergalactic trading centre has banned me from purchasing any. So I have arrived at this Academy to take your life, and with it, the cocoa that I deserve! Ahahahahaha!”_

Another alien trying to kill him? Boboiboy yawned, wondering if he should just go back to sleep.

_“No one knows your whereabouts. But I have done my research before getting here. I know who your friends are, and I have captured them. They are at my mercy. Either surrender yourself before midday, or watch as I destroy them!”_

The screen panned to the outside of a spaceship, where giant metallic claws were holding all Boboiboy’s friends hostage up in the air. Gopal, Yaya, Ying, Fang, Ochobot, Tok Aba, even Papa Zola.

He leapt to his feet, horrified. How dare anyone kidnap his friends?!

The video had ended. Boboiboy was filled with both dread and rage – he couldn’t stand the fact that someone was using his friends against him like this. But what to do? If he went and surrendered himself, he would die! But if he didn’t, his friends would die, and he couldn’t have that…

He grabbed the nearly empty mugs that he had been making tea and coffee for himself in last night and opened the storeroom door, heading out at top speed. He had no idea what to do, where he was going, but he had to do _something_ –

“Hey, look out!”

At the last second he looked up and barely just avoided running straight into Adu Du.

“Look where you’re going!” Adu Du snapped at him.

Boboiboy just groaned. “Ugh, not you. I don’t have time for this. My friends are–”

“I know, I know, Ejo Jo has them captured at the front of the Academy. I saw it.”

“Great. Now can you get out of my way? I have to… I don’t know, go get knights to help or something…”

“The knights are all gone! It’s the start of the holidays, remember? Almost everyone left yesterday. The only knight who’s still here is yours, and he’s busy being held captive right now and can’t help us.”

Boboiboy glared at him. “What do you mean ‘us’? What trick are you trying to play on me now?”

“Pah, there’s no trick!” Adu Du scoffed. “Ejo Jo was my classmate at my old school and he was the worst! A total jerk and a bully. He might just be the only person I hate more than you. I would do anything to take him down…”

“Really?”

“Yes! And anyway, if he kills you first then he’s the one that’ll get all your planet’s cocoa! I can’t let that happen!”

Pffffff, of course, it was all about the cocoa. How predictable.

“Fine,” said Boboiboy. “Just this once we can work together to stop this guy.”

“Ah, excellent.”

“Where’s Probe?”

“Probe has gone to distract Ejo Jo while I looked for you. He won’t last long though – Ejo Jo has superior weapons and technology compared with what’s available for students at this school. We have to go help him before Ejo Jo destroys him.”

It was strange to see Adu Du speaking so fondly of Probe – usually he was always yelling at the poor robot, or hitting him, or generally being mean. Did he really actually care? That was unexpected, but not in a bad way.

Adu Du grabbed one of the mugs off Boboiboy. “Oh, I need some hot chocolate, I haven’t even had any breakfast…”

“That’s not h…” He trailed off. Never mind. Adu Du was already glugging down the remains, so whatever.

“What… what is this?!”

“Coffee.”

“COFFEE?!” Adu Du was staring at the empty mug in complete wonder.

Boboiboy shrugged. “I made some coffee for myself, yeah. Did you like it?”

“WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME THAT THERE WAS A BETTER DRINK THAN HOT CHOCOLATE???”

A… what?

Adu Du practically had hearts in his eyes as he stared at the mug adoringly. “This! THIS! I have never tasted something so beautiful in my life!”

“Huh? You like it?”

Adu Du threw the empty mug at his head. “Of course I like it! How can anyone not?!”

“I mean, I think it’s too bitter for me, I don’t usually drink it–”

“You’re a Benevolent coward! Nothing is too bitter for me, the most evil and Malevolent creature in the universe! And this… this _coffee_ … oh, it’s perfect… ahahaha… hahahahaha… HAHAHAHAHA–”

“Are you done?” Boboiboy asked. “My friends and your robot are in danger, we don’t have time for you to evil laugh!”

Adu Du cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, of course… Let’s go, Boboiboy.”

Well. Teaming up with Adu Du was not something he had ever thought he would be doing. But desperate times called for desperate measures…


	14. #SquadGoals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit more Mild Stabbing. And like... Mild Violence and stuff. As usual, not to be taken seriously. Please feel free to mock every part of this fic.

“Let us go!” called Yaya, struggling valiantly against the robotic claws that held her up against the side of the school exterior. “This is illegal! I’ll be telling the space police!”

Ejo Jo, standing at the foot of his spaceship, sighed and put a palm up to his forehead. “Will you shut up?”

“Never!” Ying yelled. “Boboiboy will come and save us, you’ll see!”

“Hah, what can that pesky little kid even do? I’ll slaughter him, just like I slaughtered that robot.”

“Well we’ll slaughter you back!”

“I’m hungry,” whined Gopal. “If you’re going to keep us trapped like this then can’t you at least let us have some breakfast? I’ll die of starvation before you even get to kill us.”

“This is an insult to justice!” Papa Zola said. “Good always defeats evil, and you will never win, you evil alien!”

Ejo Jo buried his face in his hands. “Why are you all so annoying…”

Boboiboy, hidden around the corner, turned back to look at Adu Du. “What are we going to do? How should we free them?”

Adu Du, however, was staring in shock at the purple pile of scrap lying in the corner of the courtyard. “Oh… oh my Probe… _what has he done to you?”_

“I’m sure he’s not dead!” Boboiboy said quickly.

“Well of course he’s not dead! This is a G-rated fic, isn’t it?”

“Uhh…” Boboiboy had no clue what that meant, but it did stir something in his memory. “I thought you said you were ‘changing it to a T-rating’ or something?”

“That was only if I managed to kill you by flamethrower, which I didn’t.”

“Okay…? Anyway, what are we going to do about my friends?”

Adu Du was looking at the scene ahead of them carefully. “I think I have a plan. But I need you to distract Ejo Jo while I go and pull it off.”

“What? You’re not planning on running away and leaving me here, are you?”

“No, of course not! I’m not a wimp! Just keep Ejo Jo occupied and distracted so he doesn’t see me.”

“Alright, fine.” Boboiboy held out his hand. “Can I have your compass?”

“What? Why?”

“I have a plan too. I need to use it to free my friends.”

Adu Du reluctantly handed him the compass. “Fine. But give it back afterwards okay? This compass has sentimental value!”

“Whatever. You go do your plan, and I’ll free my friends and then distract Ejo Jo with them. I’m counting on you, okay?”

“Yes. I won’t let you down.”

It was still so surreal, being teamed up with Adu Du like this. But it wasn’t as if he had much of a choice in the matter – it was either this, or someone dying. And anyway, it was kind of refreshing to not have Adu Du trying to murder him for once.

They headed their separate ways – Adu Du back into the building to pull off whatever his plan was, and Boboiboy out towards the open courtyard.

Ejo Jo was too busy yelling at his friends to have seen him yet. Perfect. Boboiboy crept up towards the spaceship, still under cover from the shadows of the trees and foliage around. Hopefully this was going to work…

He made his way, still unnoticed, to the base of the mechanical arm that was keeping his friends captive. Aha – the screw! Exactly what he was looking for.

Using the compass as a makeshift screwdriver, he started dismantling the end of the arm. If he could just do it without being spotted, then he could detach this thing and his friends would be free–

“Boboiboy? Is that you? Ahhh I’m so happy to see you!”

He jumped and dropped the compass. Everyone was glaring at Gopal, who seemed to have just realized what he had done and quickly shut his mouth in horror.

Ejo Jo turned around. “Oh, so you’re here after all! Excellent!”

So much for the plan. Now his best bet was to keep stalling and hope Adu Du wouldn’t take too long. “Let my friends go right now!”

Ejo Jo laughed. “Why should I do that? You haven’t surrendered yourself to me yet.”

“How dare you kidnap them?”

“Hah, you fool. I should just kill you right here and now, never mind about waiting until midday. And then I will kill your friends too!”

Ejo Jo lunged forwards, aiming what looked like some kind of massive light-based sword directly at him. He covered his face with his arms, bracing for the worst–

There was an almighty crash.

Boboiboy opened his eyes and lowered his arms a little. He was still alive?

There, in front of him, having blocked the sword’s impact, was…

“Probe!”

Mega-Probe, to be precise. Evidently he had managed to muster up the energy to lug himself off the ground and leap into the way at the last second.

“Don’t worry, Boboiboy!” he said, turning slightly to look at him. “I won’t let you die! Mister Boss has to be the one to kill you, not this jerk!”

Boboiboy grinned. “Thank you Probe!”

Ejo Jo yanked his sword out of Probe’s armour, scowling. “Ugh, you’re really trying to get in my way again? You’ll pay for this, you useless robot!” He began attacking again.

While those two were battling it out, Boboiboy picked up the compass and carried on his work. Nearly there, nearly there, nearly–

There!

The arm was detached. He gave it a push, and the whole thing wobbled a bit, before its electric components shut off and it released its grasp on his friends. They fell to the ground, free at last.

By this time Ejo Jo had gained the upper hand and tossed Probe aside. He started walking towards Boboiboy, absolutely livid.

“You really think you stand a chance against me? I will destroy you!”

Boboiboy held the compass out, pointy end first. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll… I’ll…”

“What, stab me with a compass? I’d like to see you try!”

Once again, Ejo Jo ran forwards and swung his sword at Boboiboy. This time it was blocked yet again – but not by Probe.

“You okay, Boboiboy?”

Boboiboy stared in amazement. His dear knight was standing in front of him, blocking Ejo Jo’s attack with his own sword. Ejo Jo growled and pushed harder, but Fang did not budge.

“Don’t you dare attack Boboiboy!”

“Get out of my way, insolent knight!”

“Never!” Fang lowered his voice and turned his head towards Boboiboy for a few seconds. “I’ve already contacted Captain Kaizo, so hopefully he’ll be here to help us soon if he doesn’t decide to ignore my messages like he often does…”

Boboiboy smiled, so proud of his knight. “Thank you for saving me, Fang!”

Fang looked slightly surprised. Oh yes – the last time they had spoken, Boboiboy had sort of yelled at him…

Well never mind, this wasn’t the time to be thinking about that.

“We need to keep stalling him,” he said. “Adu Du said he has a plan too, but we have to keep Ejo Jo distracted.”

“Okay.”

Right on cue, something hit the back of Ejo Jo’s head. He stepped back and picked it up. “HEY! Who threw this empty cocoa can at me?”

Gopal giggled nervously. “Uh, sorry? Mistook you for the bin.”

“What? GrrrrrrrrRRAHHHHH! You’ll pay for this!”

“I won’t pay for anything, I barely have any money!”

“You know what I mean!”

The next second, Ejo Jo was hit from another side by a flying pen. He grabbed it off the ground and snapped it in half, absolutely furious.

“WHO DID THIS?”

Yaya cleared her throat, holding up her notepad. “You’ve already broken 16 intergalactic laws in the past 5 minutes! I’ll have to tell the space police about this!”

“What laws?!”

“Kidnapping, attempted murder, illegally modified sword, endangerment of children, causing grievous bodily harm to a robot, illegally parked spaceship, property damage–”

“Gah, I don’t have time for this! I will kill you!”

By this point Ying had sprinted up and picked up the cocoa can, and now ran back to a decent distance and threw it again.

“NOW WHAT?!”

“Haha, gotcha!” she laughed, high-fiving Yaya.

“You insolent children!”

“Is ‘insolent’ really the best insult you can come up with? I have better insults than that! I’ll prove it to you! Wanna rap battle?”

“Of course I don’t want to rap battle!”

Boboiboy watched in awe – his friends, despite not knowing combat, were genuinely fighting a ruthless alien for him? He couldn’t be more proud!

Ejo Jo could have easily taken down any single one of them on their own. But being hit from several different angles with anything they could get their hands on – swords, apples, rocks, even bits of grass to make him sneeze – it was overwhelming him to the degree that he simply couldn’t win.

Not to mention the trash-talk. Oh, dear goodness, the _trash-talk_.

“You’re so bad at this killing thing, even Adu Du was better than you and he’s the laughing stock of the school!”

“–illegal armour material, trespassing in Academy territory, noise pollution, aerial pollution–”

“Is this really the best you can do? You’re getting beaten by a bunch of kids and an old man!”

“You have no class, Ejo Jo! You’re so weird!”

“I bet you don’t even have any friends!”

“Boboiboy is so much cooler than you are!”

This was working – this was actually, really working! Hopefully whatever Adu Du was planning, it wouldn’t take too long. Otherwise they’d all get tired out from all the running around. Though on the bright side it seemed like Ejo Jo was getting tired out too.

Another spaceship loomed in the distant sky. That looked familiar…

“Captain Kaizo’s spaceship!” Boboiboy said, pointing at it. “He’s here!”

“Well he doesn’t have anywhere to park, considering that Ejo Jo can’t even keep his own spaceship parked within the lines properly,” Yaya said, hands on her hips in annoyance.

“Where will he park then?”

“He’ll have to park at the University car park, so it’ll take him a bit longer to get here.”

“Then we keep stalling!”

Surely what Adu Du was planning would be ready soon. If only Boboiboy had asked what the plan actually was! Then maybe he would be able to help somehow. But for now, the best plan was to just stall and hope for the best. Hopefully Adu Du would come through in the end.

Ejo Jo, panting for breath, was backed up near the front of the school building. He was still being hit by several little pebbles that Papa Zola was chucking at him from the side, but he barely reacted. He looked… tired.

Boboiboy was filled with not just pride, but rage too – how dare this alien try to attack his friends like that? Ejo Jo was so much worse than Adu Du! At least Adu Du tended to try to avoid collateral damage, or hurting people he didn’t need to!

Gripping the compass as tightly as he could, he ran up and took a flying leap at Ejo Jo.

Stabbing someone…

…did not feel as cathartic as he had hoped.

Maybe it was because he was just using a compass, as opposed to a sword? Or maybe because he just didn’t like the idea of stabbing anyone, even if it was someone who definitely, 100% deserved it.

But there he was, having stabbed Ejo Jo’s arm through a gap in his armour.

Did that even help?

“Oh no – no no no nO BOBOIBOY WATCH OUT – !”

That was Adu Du’s voice, from somewhere above him.

He looked up to briefly see Adu Du on the roof directly above them, having just pushed something off.

Oh.

That something was a gargoyle.

And it was rapidly hurtling towards them at top speed.

He couldn’t get away in time before it hit the ground barely a metre away from him, smashing into pieces, most of which landed right on Ejo Jo and knocked him to the ground too.

Phew, well at least it hadn’t hit Boboiboy directly–

One of the chunks flew off and smacked him in the side of the head.

He fell to his knees, dizzy. Vaguely he registered his friends running over to check on him, Ochobot giving him a scan, Tok Aba holding him.

The important thing was that Ejo Jo had been defeated, right? As dizzy as he was, he forced his eyes to focus – yes, Ejo Jo was lying there, having been knocked out.

Good.

Boboiboy closed his eyes again, the dizziness overwhelming him. Hopefully Captain Kaizo would be here soon to pick up the pieces of this battle…


	15. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Boboiboy awoke in the familiar hospital room. Ochobot, having been sitting there watching him, jumped up in the air in excitement.

“He’s awake!”

Several people came over to crowd around. Boboiboy sat up slightly to see that all his friends were there, beaming at him. He tentatively put a hand to the side of his head – oh, it still hurt. His hat was lying on the table beside him along with Adu Du’s compass.

Captain Kaizo stood there too, his arms crossed. “Well he’s perfectly fine, so can I leave now?”

“Don’t you wish to stay and congratulate him on his amazing battle?!” Papa Zola asked.

“Battle? Hah. He stabbed Ejo Jo with a compass.”

“But he has no combat training! That was quite a feat, considering the circumstances!”

Kaizo rolled his eyes. “Fine. Boboiboy, you were awesome. Maybe you’d make a good knight someday, if Fang ever decides to teach you. Now goodbye. I have to take Ejo Jo to intergalactic prison.” He turned around and strode off without another word.

Boboiboy sat up properly, feeling a little better now. “What happened?”

“Adu Du dropped a gargoyle off the roof and it injured Ejo Jo enough that he passed out,” Ochobot explained. “He’ll be taken to prison for breaking 15 intergalactic laws.”

“16!” Yaya snapped. “16 intergalactic laws, and I have them all written down!”

“Okay, 16! Anyway Boboiboy, you got hit by a piece of the gargoyle too, but your hat saved you from the worst of the damage. We took you here immediately.”

“How long have I been out for?” he asked.

“About 15 minutes.”

Oh. Not too long, thank goodness.

Tok Aba came over and handed him a mug of hot chocolate. “You did amazing, Boboiboy! I’m so proud of you!”

“I just stabbed him with a compass…”

“But it was awesome!”

“Oh please!” Adu Du scoffed, pushing everyone out of the way and making his way over. “So when I stab Boboiboy with a compass everyone makes fun of me, but when Boboiboy does it, you all praise him?”

Ying gave Adu Du a hard poke in the arm. “Hey! You were attacking an innocent defenceless child! Boboiboy was defending himself against a murderer! There’s a huge difference!”

“Whatever! Anyway Boboiboy, I have something to say to you.”

Boboiboy held his mug of hot chocolate close. Now that Ejo Jo was gone, there was nothing stopping Adu Du from trying to kill him again…

“I’ve realized that there is a far superior drink to cocoa,” Adu Du continued. “And that drink is coffee! What need have I for your planet when I can find a planet with an abundance of coffee beans instead? Hehehehehehe. MwahahAHAHAHA–”

“You mean you’re not going to try and kill me anymore?” Boboiboy asked, his spirits rising.

“There’s no point! Anyway, I hate this stupid school! Everyone here is mean to me and I have to take Probe back home for repairs!”

“Oh… okay then. Good luck with everything.”

“How dare you be nice to me! I still hate you, Boboiboy!”

With that, Adu Du snatched his compass off the table and made a quick getaway.

“Oh, thank goodness he’s gone!” Gopal said, rushing over and giving Boboiboy a hug. “I’ve been so stressed out about everything! Did you know I have nightmares about you dying? It’s really scary okay!”

Boboiboy gladly hugged his friend back. “You don’t need to worry anymore, I’m safe now!”

“So I guess you won’t need a knight anymore, will you?”

Everyone in the room turned to look at Fang, who was standing in the corner of the room eating a donut. He paused halfway through a bite, aware that all eyes were on him.

Boboiboy did not know what to think. “I… I mean… he can still be my knight if he wants to…”

“Are students even allowed to have personal knights if they’re not in mortal danger?” Gopal turned to look at Yaya for an answer.

“Does it matter?” she replied. “Boboiboy is awesome, so he can do anything he wants!”

Ying stared at her for a few seconds, giving her a gentle prod. “Did you… did you really just say he can do anything he wants? Even breaking the rules?”

“Life is more important than rules!”

“Who are you and what have you done with Yaya?!”

“I still care about the rules of course! But how can Boboiboy follow the rules if he’s dead? How can anyone for that matter? Rules should be ignored if they mean that someone is going to die!”

Ying just glomped Yaya and cuddled her tight. “You’re so right and I’m so proud of you for saying so!”

“Aww thank you!”

Ochobot started ushering everyone away. “Boboiboy needs some rest now! And you all need to go home for the holidays!”

“What?” Gopal was trying to resist being dragged off. “I’m not going home for the holidays! Not when Boboiboy is here! And he doesn’t need rest, he’s perfectly fine–”

“He needs rest and _his knight should be here to protect him while he rests_ ,” Ochobot said pointedly.

“Ohhh, I see,” Gopal said, glancing at Fang. “You’re right Ochobot, we should all leave Boboiboy alone to rest except for his knight, who uh… yeah… needs to protect him and stuff… even though Adu Du’s not trying to kill him anymore… but y’know, just in case… not for any other reason or anything…”

Boboiboy just glared at them all, unimpressed. They weren’t subtle at all, were they?

“I’ll be back later Boboiboy! Tell me everything!” Gopal gave Fang a very hard nudge in the ribs as he passed, for which Fang immediately responded by smacking him in the arm.

Seriously… his friends were such weirdos.

“We’ll be back later too!” Yaya said, shuffling off with Ying still clinging to her. “None of us are leaving for the holidays – we’ll all stay here to make sure you’re not alone!”

Boboiboy couldn’t help but smile. This was so different to how he had been raised back home. Independence? Hah, if he had carried on being independent, he would be dead several times over by now.

If it weren’t for his friends protecting him, there would be no Boboiboy.

He made up his mind – he would do the same for any of them if they were in danger. No matter how many people he had to stab.

The room was mostly empty now. Fang had finished eating his donut and was slowly walking over.

He looked kind of… nervous. That made sense. They hadn’t really talked properly since yesterday, when after Kaizo left, Boboiboy had pushed him away and told him to go to hell…

Oh boy. He was regretting saying that now.

“So…” Fang perched on the edge of the bed, pushing his visor up nervously. “About the… the _thing_ … I really should apologize to you.”

Wait…

Apologize?

_Apologize?_

Boboiboy sat up even more. Oh, he hadn’t realized just how badly he needed to hear an apology from this jerk. This was definitely going to heal him, if nothing else would.

“I’m sorry for being so jealous and annoying all the time,” Fang said, staring at the ground. “The truth is… well I never really get much attention from anyone. You saw how Kaizo treats me. So it really sucked to see some… some cute boy getting all the attention instead of me, especially since you didn’t do anything for it except be lucky…”

Boboiboy gulped – hearing Fang call him _cute_ really hammered it in that no, he wasn’t over him, he never had been, as much as he had tried to pretend. He was still insanely attracted to this annoying emo jerk.

“…and I d-didn’t want to admit I liked you,” Fang continued, blushing furiously all of a sudden. “Yeah, it wasn’t all just jealousy. I was mad at myself for falling for the guy who already made my life hell, and I hated how nice to me you were at first… and then I hated how you were clearly messing with me just because you found it funny! That was mean, okay? So I tried to get revenge by… you know… after the closet when we… yeah.”

Oh? So that was why he had refused to acknowledge the closet kiss? That… kind of made sense, now that he thought about it.

Fang was still soldiering on through his apology, though from the looks of it, was getting so flustered he could hardly get his words out.

“But I know that was really petty and stupid of me. I really do like you! Really, y-you’re awesome… I honestly love having you as a friend, you’re so fun and great and nice, and… and uh, hot… _so_ hot… and I sort of think about that closet every day, and I wish I hadn’t… hadn’t hurt your feelings! And been an idiot! Because… because I l-love… I… I l-l-love y–…”

He was aggressively looking at the ground now, clearly unaccustomed to actually talking about his feelings out loud. Poor thing. It was probably best to put him out of his misery. Anyway, his almost-love-confession was so unbelievably cute, it was getting increasingly difficult to think about anything except kissing him.

Boboiboy leaned forwards and shut him up by pressing his lips onto Fang’s.

Oh man, he had wanted to do this for ages. He couldn’t help it – he did love Fang. He loved his knight to pieces. Hearing the apology, knowing that Fang truly cared, it allowed him to fully admit it to himself. He didn’t have to worry about getting his heart broken anymore.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, the old “advice” from his friends from that day at the café was still rattling around, useless and almost forgotten. Slow kisses, Fang being a vampire, all of that nonsense. Would it be a good idea to test it out now?

Pulling back a little, he hooked his pinkie finger under the edge of Fang’s visor, carefully lifting it off and putting it down beside them. Then he gently pulled Fang back into a soft, slow, lingering kiss, before breaking off to put a few down his neck.

It should have been super romantic. But hearing Fang’s surprised little intake of breath was too much for him – he burst into laughter.

“Hey! W-what’s so funny?”

Boboiboy clung onto him, resting his head on his shoulder, still giggling slightly. “The others were so right about you…”

“Huh? What did they say about me?!”

“That if I take off your visor and kiss you like that, you’ll melt!”

“Well… well I’ll make you melt too, you’ll see… lemme go get my guitar…”

Fang planted a quick kiss on his cheek and then dashed off, his face practically the colour of a ripe beetroot. Boboiboy grinned to himself – he was probably a dizzy swooning mess right now and he didn’t even care. Was Fang going to serenade him again, for real this time?

There was a sudden tap on the window.

He jumped and turned to see Yaya there, waving her notebook at him. Phew, she had given him a heart attack! He got up and went over to open the window. “What are you doing here?!”

“I just got confirmation from teacher Papa!” she said. “As a gesture towards queer solidarity, the rules have been updated. Now all kissing is prohibited, regardless of the gender of the participants.”

“Wait, what?”

“I just thought I should let you know, since we left you alone with Fang and everything.”

“Were you the one who asked Papa Zola to change the rule?”

“Well… not quite… I was the one who informed him of the loophole, though…”

Seriously? Right when Fang had literally _just_ become his boboiboyfriend?!

“What is wrong with you?!” he hissed.

“Hey, I’ll have you know that this rule negatively impacts me too! And anyway, it still only applies during term time. It’s the holidays now! You can kiss your knight as much as you want!”

Boboiboy blushed. He very much did want.

“Speaking of your knight,” Yaya said, “where did he go? I don’t see him in there…”

Oh, he did not want this teacher’s pet spying on his serenade. He slammed the window shut and closed the blinds.

“Boboiboy? … Oh fine then, I’ll see you later! Make sure you get all your holiday homework done!”

Hah, it was Gopal who would need reminding about that, not him! And if he needed any help, there was always Ying around to give him a hand with it.

Fang walked back into the room, guitar at the ready.

“Can I ask you something?” said Boboiboy. “That time when you were playing the guitar outside my balcony, what were you actually doing? Were you really trying to court me?”

Fang rolled his eyes. “I was just practising, I didn’t think you’d hear me! …But yeah, I was… thinking about you when I was playing it. You’re cute, okay?”

Aw, it was such a nice change to hear Fang actually admitting these things for once. He could certainly get used to this…

His phone went off on the table beside him. Boboiboy picked it up and had a look at who was calling him.

Oh… his father.

“Hello?”

“Son, aren’t you supposed to be home?” Amato said, frowning at him through the camera. “The reminder your mother put in my calendar says that your holidays should have started.”

Boboiboy had just about had enough. “I was too busy being almost killed by someone who wanted to take our planet for its cocoa reserves.”

“Oh, excellent! This will teach you to–”

“And it was my _friends_ who saved me. Not me on my own. I couldn’t have beaten Ejo Jo without them.”

“But… what about being independent?”

“I don’t want to be independent! If I had tried to solve everything myself, I would have _died!_ Anyway, I’m staying here for the holidays so don’t look out for me. Same with Tok Aba. Also I have a boyfriend now. Goodbye, dad.”

He didn’t wait for a response before hanging up and chucking his phone back onto the table. Wow… that had felt good.

Fang was staring at him, a grin slowly appearing on his face. “If only I could have that much attitude with Captain Kaizo…”

Boboiboy started giggling – seeing Fang with a guitar was just turning him all dumb for some reason. “Are you… are you going to serenade me then?”

“Heh… of course…”

He sat and listened as his knight softly sang to him, just gazing at him dreamily, unable to do anything else. Fang truly was a great singer.

And this was so much better than last time. Unlike then, he didn’t have to worry that this whole thing was some cruel joke. And unlike then, he didn’t have some evil murderer out to get him!

For the first time since reaching the Academy in the first place, things were looking up.

He could finally _relax._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY @findmeinthevoid !!! Thank you for all your awesome feedback on this fic and for gushing about it so much every time I uploaded a new chapter. You are like 90% of the reason I managed to have the motivation to write it so fast. Thank you for being an awesome honourary little sister, and I hope you've enjoyed this strange pile of nonsense. You are wonderful and deserve the world <3
> 
> Anyway, yes, it turns out I very much enjoy writing Boboiboy fic. Expect more at some point.
> 
> UPDATE: Anyone wanna read ALL of Fang's cursed as hell, absurdly emo, My Immortal-esque diary? Here ya go. [Fang's diary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994663). I really did write all of it because I have no idea what I'm doing with my life. Good luck.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tolerate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530762) by [MidnightMeadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightMeadows/pseuds/MidnightMeadows)




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